Lobster fishermen in Maine have long had to cope with a volatile consumer market that could send prices soaring in the early spring only to bottom out in the fall. But an aggressive international marketing campaign and new demand across the U.S. are changing that cycle and providing more financial stability than fishermen have seen in years.
It’s lunch hour in Hoboken, New Jersey, and the crowds are lined up at a popular food truck — but it’s not sausage parmigiana or cheese steak sandwiches that they’re waiting for.
Josh Freeman, the manager of Luke’s two Nauti Trucks, is selling lobster rolls in New Jersey almost as fast as the fresh meat can be processed at Cape Seafood in Saco and trucked down I-95. He arrives to work on a street that features mobile cuisine reflecting a world of tastes, but he says the Maine lobster is more than holding its own.
“Since we started the food truck there’s been quite an increase in street food and better quality street food,” Freeman says. “First people might have questioned seafood from a truck, but now it almost seems normal.”
And Freeman’s not the only one hawking lobster rolls on wheels.
“So my brother and my cousin started their business in 2012, and very quickly were recruited actually into being on ‘Shark Tank,’” says Annie Tselikis, executive director of the Maine Lobster Dealers Association and marketing director for Maine Coast lobster wholesalers.
Operating as Cousins Maine Lobster, Tselikis’s brother and cousins succeeded in winning $55,000 to launch their business while competing on the ABC venture capitalist show. Tselikis says the rolling lobster roll trucks can now be found in cities from coast to coast.
“So they’re in 13 cities across the country and will have, I believe, 30 trucks by the end of this year,” she says. “Those are franchise operations. They own their trucks in Los Angeles where they have three trucks there and a brick and mortar location.”
Tselikis says the explosion in the sales of Maine and Canadian lobster is the direct result of four consecutive years of lobster landings in excess of 120 million pounds annually. New marketing approaches targeting Europe and Asia and the dramatic increase in the expansion of lobster food trucks — along with new, improved processing techniques — mean that more and more people are being introduced to Maine’s iconic crustacean.
Patrice McCarron of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association says fishermen here in Maine are more than pleased.
“I think if we look at 2016 as a whole, every harvester would say, it’s been a good year — the catch has been very stable, the price has been relatively strong,” she says.
Retail prices for live hard-shell lobsters are currently in the $7.50-per-pound range and holding, a far cry from the bad old days of 2012, when a glut of lobsters caused the wholesale price to bottom out at around $2.70. By creating new demand for the product, fishermen such as Joe Young in Corea are able to craft a reliable budget that doesn’t gyrate with the whims of a once seasonal customer base.
“Well our price certainly has stabilized more,” he says. “It still fluctuates — but it is better.”
And the stability isn’t just better for lobster fishermen.
Harvard Austin, sales manager of Darling’s Chevrolet in Ellsworth, can easily explain why lobstermen with cash are trading up for new trucks.
“Two reasons: They can write it off and it’s a great automobile to haul their traps and lobsters,” he says. “A lot of them nowadays have trailers so they can use the trucks for both personal and business.”
It would be presumptuous to measure the success of a lobster fisherman by the year of his truck, but Young says that when business is good, fishermen go shopping.
“There’s more to it than pickups, but there’s a lot of toys out there and a lot of them are being bought,” he says.
Last year, Maine’s lobster harvest was valued at about $500 million, with state landings of 120 million pounds.