Maine news, sports, weather from Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram, Portland, Maine

December 12, 2010

Clawing her way to new heights

Retailing scion Linda Bean's entry into Maine's lobster trade changed her life - and the way an industry does business

By Beth Quimby bquimby@mainetoday.com
Staff Writer

ST. GEORGE - For years, Linda Bean had admired the picturesque wharves and waterfront businesses in the villages on the St. George peninsula on Penobscot Bay.

She even went so far as to offer her name and phone number at one point to David Albano, owner of the Bay Lobster Co. and wharf in Port Clyde, in case he ever decided to sell. Then she forgot all about it until Albano, who had stuck her number in a drawer nine years earlier, called her to ask if she was still interested.

On the threshold of a divorce and after years of not working, and at an age when many are seeking to kick back a little, Bean jumped at the chance to buy the business in 2007.

"I said, 'I sure would love to get involved, but you would have to teach me,' " Bean said.

Three years later, Bean, granddaughter of Maine's most famous retailer, L.L. Bean, is presiding over a growing lobster business as she approaches age 70.

The mother of three sons in their 40s and a grandmother of four, Bean has built an empire that extends to four wharves, a floating buying station, the midcoast's only lobster processing plant -- with another in the works -- plus other waterfront properties.

Her volume has grown from 400,000 pounds of lobster the first year to 4 million pounds this year.

She has opened a chain of eight lobster cafes, with another due to open this spring. Her businesses are providing jobs for 156 workers, excluding the fishermen, and are well on their way to achieving her goal of creating new markets for Maine's lobstermen.

With the announcement last month that she had snagged the Walmart account for frozen cooked lobster claws, Bean solidified her role as a player in Maine's most valuable fishery.

The state's annual catch of about 75 million pounds is worth about $300 million to the roughly 6,000 licensed lobstermen. The industry employs thousands of others as crew members and at associated businesses, such as processing plants, restaurants, bait dealers and boat yards.

Bean's Walmart account was the result of a change in law this year that allows Maine companies to sell lobster claws and knuckles separately and offer value-added products for the first time. Previously, only whole lobsters, whole lobster tails in the shell and lobster meat picked out of the shell could be sold, due to concerns that undersized lobsters would be sold if the parts were separated.

The changes were designed in part to stop the flow of tens of millions of pounds of Maine lobster to Canada, where it was legal to process into parts. The processed lobster was then resold in the United States as a Canadian product.

It appears the law may be working. Not only is Bean selling her claws to Walmart, but another processor is looking at setting up shop at the former Stinson Seafood plant in Prospect Harbor.

The lobster processing plant at 17 Merrill Drive in Rockland was humming Tuesday following a run of good weather and a plentiful haul.

Inside, workers wearing tall rubber boots to avoid the ever-present lobster juice separated the claws from the bodies. The claws were quickly cooked, then plunged into a cooling bath. The smell of cooked lobster wafted throughout the plant.

Several of the workers said dealing with mounds of lobster all day has had no impact on their own appetites for the crustacean.

Some of the claws were sent to the picking room, where a couple dozen workers separated the meat from the shell, including the hard-to-get-at knuckle portion. The meat was headed to Bean's restaurants and other food service operators. The rest of the whole claws were flash-frozen, scored and packaged for Walmart.

(Continued on page 2)

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