Cal Hancock’s business has found its niche by producing specialty, high-end seafood products, and in doing so, utilizes 20,000 to 25,000 pounds of knuckle and claw lobster meat processed in Maine.
Owner of Hancock Gourmet Lobster Co., Hancock puts the bulk of this lobster meat into Cundy’s Harbor Lobster Stew. Another large percent of the lobster is used in Hancock’s Pemaquid Lobster Pot Pies, elegant creations that are sold in individual four-inch ramekins. The 4.9-ounce pies contain lobster meat in a creamy sherry-laced sauce and are covered with puff pastry topped by a puff pastry lobster cutout. The pies have been, to put it mildly, a great success. “When we started to make them, we bought 10,000 ramekins, thinking they’d last a year or two,” Hancock says. “They were gone in less than six months.”
This is rich fare, so full of cream and butter you don’t want to know the fat content, but also pricey enough you wouldn’t eat it frequently, anyway. The secret ingredient, besides the mysterious seasoning, is the profusion of lobster. No token chunks here, no suspicion that a lobster merely walked through the stew, which Sue Hawkes, a native of Cundy’s Harbor describes as “the best lobster stew I’ve ever tasted.” Absolutely no potatoes or other fillers added to the pie.
Hancock’s business is a real success story, achieved through top-of-the-line products and imaginative marketing on an Internet website and at trade shows. In 2002, the business grew 150 percent over 2001, its start-up year.
Hancock entered the venture with business savvy gained through 20 years’ work in marketing and executive management with a varied number of large and small businesses in the Midwest. She says she “filled in the blanks” with help from Coastal Enterprises, Inc. (CEI), where she still consults regularly with an advisory group made up of women with expertise in different aspects of small businesses. She also sought help from the Small Business Administration and the National Association of Specialty Food Trade and has consulted with Maine’s Lobster Institute and Lobster Promotion Council.
Hancock started the business in January, 2001, by purchasing LeBlanc Seafood, a company based in Presque Isle, which was famous for its LeBlanc’s Gourmet Lobster Stew. The secret recipe had won several awards, been served to first-class passengers on airlines and was featured in gourmet cooking magazines. Hancock still uses the secret LeBlanc recipe; she merely changed the name and packaging.
A native of York, Maine, Hancock had a natural affinity for the food business through her grandmothers. Hazel Ellis Hancock started the Lobster Pound restaurant in Ogunquit in 1946 and became well known for her traditional seafood dishes. Cal Hancock often helped out in the restaurant when she was growing up. Her other grandmother, she says, loved to experiment with seasonings and international cooking. From her, she gained inspiration for special touches like the lobster pot pie’s sherried sauce and the puff pastry topping.
When Hancock and her husband, Jack Rosberg, first returned in 2000 to live permanently in Cundy’s Harbor, where they had built a home in 1992, Hancock ran a successful consulting business. She hadn’t seriously considered changing to something else, and when Linda LeBlanc, who she had met earlier, called to ask if she was interested, she said no. But, after thinking about the opportunity awhile, she decided to give it a try.
She worked for a month with LeBlanc in Presque Isle, and then moved production to the Brunswick Industrial Park with an office in her home in Cundy’s Harbor. She developed a new logo and hired Mary Brown of Brown Design & Co. in Portland to handle marketing design work, including a web site. Through Brown, she connected with Rockport artist Melissa Sweet, who illustrates children’s books. Sweet created the coastal scene featured on all Hancock Gourmet Lobster Co. packaging.
Exhibiting at trade shows like the Fancy Food Show held in July in New York City and the Eastern States Expo (the “Big E”) in Springfield, Massachusetts, has helped Hancock build a widespread national clientele. Most of the business is wholesale, she says, but the web site and being mentioned in a story in U.S.A. Today about touring the Maine Coast in search of lobster brought many retail customers. On the web site, in addition to stew and pot pies, she features an Offshore Sampler which includes a new product, Yarmouth Island Warm hors d’oeuvre and a holiday offering, such as a Valentine Lobster Trap. She also sells lobster meat, tails and scallops and shares gourmet recipes. Next day delivery is guaranteed, with some exceptions.
The hardest part of the business, Hancock says, is its tendency to be seasonal. “We’ll go along at a pretty even clip and then November and December will be wild,” she says. We’re trying to grow the business in other ways so it won’t be a one-quarter business.” The seasonal overload created storage problems that she’s solved by installing an outdoor freezer. In November and December, she has to run shifts seven days a week, sometimes two shifts a day, to produce the handmade stew and pies in small quantities that are frozen for shipping. Extra workers need to be hired for the kitchen and for packing. She hopes that in the future she can use machines for some of the kitchen processes like cutting and placing puff pastry on top of the pot pies.
Hancock plans to survey her customers to assess which new items would be most in demand. A request from a customer from Washington State spurred her to add a genuine New England lobster roll to the line.
“He had called in an order for stew,” she explains, “and told me he’d be so grateful if I could send him a lobster roll. I told him, ‘Sure, no problem,’ and decided to try the rolls on our web site. They’ve been amazingly popular.”
Catalog sales have been lucrative for the company, which has been featured in Williams-Sonoma, Duck Trap River, MacKenzie and Cookworks catalogs. Hancock hopes to expand this market. She’s also working with the Maine International Trade Center towards moving into the international market.
For further information, visit www.hancockgourmetlobster.com or call 725-1855 or 1-800-552-0142.