Gilmore’s Seafoods of Bath is reaching out in a new direction, with a small addition to house a take-out window for cooked seafood. Ben and Kevin Gilmore, owners of the market, say the expansion was inspired by frequent inquiries over the past few years from customers who are looking for a place to buy some freshly cooked seafood.
Also, the brothers say, they hope this expansion will offset a decline in fish sales over the past 15 years, which they attribute primarily to the fast pace of life – that people are too busy, have little time to cook, use more ready-to-eat food than in previous years and eat out more often. “Lobster sales have probably been our lifesaver,” says Ben Gilmore. “If we’d depended just on fish, we would have been done long ago.”
The Gilmores have hired two cooks and two counter people to tend the take-out, which will offer a wide assortment of cooked fresh seafood, including haddock sandwiches, shrimp, scallop, clam, lobster and crab rolls, and baskets with all of the above. They’ll also have hot dogs and hamburgers for people who don’t eat seafood. Picnic tables will be available alongside the newly paved and landscaped parking lot.
Kevin Gilmore will oversee the operation, but he and Ben want their customers to understand they will continue to operate the fresh seafood market just as they have for the past 25 years, obtaining fish directly from fishermen and the Portland Fish Auction and cutting it themselves. Some of their customers have shopped at the market since the early days when their father, Richard “Lefty” Gilmore, ran it on Front Street in Bath. They and many others are old friends, and the brothers always take time to ask about their families and work.
Kevin and Ben Gilmore’s heritage in selling fish goes back to their father’s great-grandfather, who used a horse and buggy to transport mackerel to Bath from the fishing village of West Point in Phippsburg. The brothers both worked with their father before they bought the business in 1978 and moved it to the present location on Court Street, just north of the Bath Shopping Center. Now, some of their sons are working part-time at the market.
Ben Gilmore says their father, who cut meat and then set up a fish counter for Sampson’s Supermarket in Bath before opening his own store in 1958, stops by to check on his sons fairly often. Originally, says Ben, he was apprehensive about the expansion, but the first time he came in after they started the work, he said it looked like they’re doing the right thing.
In addition to operating their retail sales counter, which carries lobster and a wide variety of fresh fish; scallops and shrimp, clams, oysters, mussels, smoked seafood and salted fish, the Gilmores will continue to sell fish wholesale to restaurants and grocery stores and pack lobsters for travel. They are renovating their processing area and have updated their walk-in cooler and ice machine so they can meet the requirements for a wholesale shellfish license.
The Gilmores don’t anticipate running the take-out in winter, but if it does very well, they might consider opening a year-round restaurant on their sizeable property.
The take-out counter will be open 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. seven days a week. The fish market is open 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.