What do you do when someone you went to school with from second grade on tells you he misses the taste of those wonderful Maine lobsters he remembers and asks you to have some top-notch ones shipped to where he now lives? (On him, of course.) You want to make sure he gets the best quality, so you start researching lobster dealers who ship retail.
The classmate decides he wants to serve eight people a pound-and-a-half lobster each with an appetizer of steamed clams. Getting the best deal turns out to be a matter of price per pound and shipping costs to a specific zip code or zone.
To feed eight, he’ll need 12 lbs. of lobster and 5 lbs. of soft shell, or steamer, clams. He wants seaweed, but it’s heavy and turns out to cost $2.50 to $3 per pound, far more expensive than the usual packing of wet newspaper, so he’ll have to come up with his own seaweed or do without. For shipping materials he’ll need an insulated box and two gel packs, which weigh 7 lbs. (Boxes cost within a dollar or so of each other from small to large.) The gross weight for his shipment will be 24 lbs. Because he lives in a rural area in North Carolina, (Delivery Zone 5), Federal Express charges extra for fuel, residential delivery and insurance.
With that information in hand, your next step is to find dealers who ship lobsters or lobsters and clams retail. You put together an arbitrary list of retail shippers drawn from the Maine Lobstermen’s Association’s newsletter’s business listings, Internet web sites, and your Rolodex.
If the customer doesn’t insist on lobsters from specific waters, buying mail order lobsters comes down to a matter of price. Prices in this article are based on the retail price of lobster in the middle of March.
Some dealers make their profit on the price of the lobster and other seafood; some make it in handling and shipping. Some dealers ship lobster retail as a service to their summer customers. One big Casco Bay dealer doesn’t ship retail. “The pie is getting too small,” he said, explaining, “the big problem is too many guys are in it. All you can do is lower the price, and you don’t make any money.” As of March 14, the supermarket in Blue Hill charged $9.99/lb.
Some shippers prefer customers to fill out a form on their website, while others would rather personalize orders by phone.
In Kittery, Sea View Lobster Co. is a family business run by fisherman Mike Flanigan’s two sons, Tom and Kevin. Mike, who’s been fishing for nearly 50 years, sold the property to his sons on the agreement that he’d have lifetime privileges at the wharf. He sells his catch to son Tom, and they have animated discussions. Mike thinks each lobster is worth more than that day’s boat price. Tom says, “My father has a personal relationship with every lobster he catches.”
The Flanigans ship clams and clam chowder as well as lobster. They use Fed Ex and DHL, another freight company, which Tom says is best for residential, zone-based rated in the South and West, where most orders originate.
Like many dealers, the Flanigans keep prices the same year round. For eight pound-and-one-half lobsters, they charge $183, including the shipping and what Tom calls “a goody bag” of lobster bibs, Wet Naps, lobster picks, etc. Clams retail for $8 per pound, so 5 lbs. of clams would add another $40 to the price, bringing Sea View’s total to $223.
At Pine Point, in Scarborough, the Bayley family has been selling lobsters since 1915. Sue Bayley, 38, who now runs the company with her father, Bill, said, “It’s been a pretty thriving retail business for a lot of years.” Her great-grandfather started the business by digging clams. Her great-grandmother cooked lobsters and sold them out the window of her house. Sue’s grandmother, Bertha Bayley, ran the retail department for 41 years. Sue Bayley, a Dartmouth College graduate who majored in English literature, grew up a stone’s throw from the family business. She said she started hanging around since she was old enough to cross the parking lot.
Sue uses United Parcel Service (UPS) exclusively. In July and August she’ll only ship cooked and uncooked hard shell and cooked soft shell lobsters. She won’t take a chance on shipping shedders because they’re too fragile. “Customer service is very important,” she said. “We get a lot of repeat customers.”
“I love retail,” she said, “I’m a problem solver. I like when they say, `Here’s what I need.’ I give them the specifics of solving problems. They go away happy.”
Part of her job is working out retail prices and making up specials. She works it out so she knows she has a 10-lb. box, then goes to the computer and see the charge for a certain area. She averages out the prices. “We make very little money on long-distance orders to Texas or California, because they’re at the end of the average,” she said. “I wish we could price individually, but we have some 16-year-old employees in summer and we try to keep it simple.
Sally Shannon, who lives nearby, says, “It’s great. I ship lobster tails every year to Kansas at Christmas to an old friend, and they arrive fresh, and they love them. They send me steaks.”
For eight pound-and-one-half lobsters Bayley’s charges $10/lb. or $128. Clams sell for $2.99/lb. so 5 lbs. come to $14.95. They charge $6.50/lb. for shipping and handling the 18 lbs. of lobsters and clams, which comes to $117. Bayley’s total is $259.95.
Free Range Fish & Lobster, in Portland, carries just about every kind of seafood available and ships it retail. Lobsters are priced by weight, with the price rising with the weight. Pound-and-one-halves to pound-and-one-quarters sell for $10.99/lb. Soft shell, or steamer, clams go for $3.49/lb. Shipping by UPS, which costs less than Fed Ex because of the rural zip code. Twelve lbs. of lobsters cost $131.88, 5 lbs. of clams come to $17.45, and UPS charges $76, for a total of $225.33.
Cook’s Lobster House on Bailey Island, which ships only lobster, charges by weight and zip code. Although the price of lobsters had gone up a dollar, Laurie Graffam said Cook’s hadn’t raised its prices and figured out the cost of eight pound-and-one-halves at $8.99/lb., which came to $107.88 plus a shipping charge of $78.25 for a total of $195.63.
The Boothbay Region Lobstermen’s Co-op, in Boothbay Harbor also ships only lobster. A six-pound minimum of any combination of lobsters will set you back $110. Any amount of pounds over that costs an additional $10/lb, which is not bad, since the retail price of lobster as of March 15 was about $10/lb. So $60 added to the $110 brought the total for Fed Exing the eight lobsters to North Carolina came to $170.
Atwood’s, at Spruce Head, off Rockland, used to ship clams for steaming along with their lobster, but the clams would arrive broken, so they stopped. They now ship just lobsters and prefer customers order from the Internet site. They charge less that way. They’ll ship eight pound-and-one-half lobsters at $9.05/lb. for $115.84. They charge $5 for the box and $1.95 for a kit for two that includes two bibs, two hand wipes, 1 cracker, two picks, and cooking information. The UPS charge is $47. If you order by phone, the lobsters and shipping come to $162.84. If you order by Internet, it’ll cost you $154.99.
Beal’s Lobster Pier, in Southwest Harbor, has been operating since 1930 when Sam Beal’s grandfather, Harvard R. Beal, started selling fish from a 16-by-36-foot barge he had moored off the end of a dock. People would call out what they wanted, and Sam’s grandfather would row the order in.
Sam’s father, Elmer (Buzzy) Beal, took over the business in 1966, when Harvard died. In 1977, Sam, who was then living with his wife and children and working in Washington, DC, as a mechanical engineer for the government, got a call from his father who thought he’d had enough of the business. He recalls his father saying, “I’ll offer you the best job, I’ll do the best for you I can: I’ll cut your salary in half and give you an extra day to work a week.” The benefit, Sam said as spread his arms and looked out the windows of his office onto the sparkling water just off the pier on a sublime March day, “was living in paradise.” He and his wife moved back to Southwest Harbor in 1976 and 29 years later still think they made the right decision.
“We thought of doing an online website,” he said, “but decided against it. We like the personal contact. We do believe in customer care.” And that’s what you’ll get if you call Beal’s. His 11?2 lb. lobsters retail at $10.35/lb. His clams for steaming go for $5.30/lb. A box and two gel packs, weighing 7 lbs., costs $10.75. Twelve lbs. of lobsters come to $124. Five lbs. of clams cost $26.50. The gross weight comes to 24 lbs. If the package were shipped to Raleigh or some other urban area, Fed Ex would charge $76.50. It charges $84.75 to Southport, for a total cost of $246.20.
Lobsterman David Thomas, from Islesford, off Northeast Harbor, ships lobster by the pound — he sells pound-and-a-halves for $12.25 each, though prices fluctuate frequently and seasonally. Eight lobsters come to $98, He absorbs the cost of the box and gel packs. He uses Fed Ex as his shipper, charging $73 for freight to Zip Code 28461 and charges an extra $12.50 for Saturday delivery. He includes cooking instructions and a copy of the latest issue of Working Waterfront with each order. His total comes to $171.
Peter Drinkwater of the Winter Harbor 5 and 10 will fill your order by buying locally caught lobsters for you. He says, “It’s just a service of the 5 and 10.” He said some of his customers make up a package and have it sent to themselves when they arrive wherever they live out of season and said he once made one up of red hot dogs and hot dog buns as a first course for lobsters.
He ships everything UPS overnight and makes his profit from shipping. He charges an extra $5 for going to the dealers and picking up the lobsters. He is an authorized shipping outlet. He stocks lobster boxes and has a freezer full of blue gel ice packs on which he makes a profit, too. The UPS shipping to coastal North Carolina costs $89. The box and ice packs come to $12. He makes no profit on the lobsters, acting only as the customer’s agent. Saturday delivery costs an extra $10 to $12. He noted UPS does not guarantee live lobster on delivery.
If all this talk about lobster has driven you to order some right away, you might try calling lobsterman and poundkeeper Bruce Portrie, of Harrington. His profit comes from his pounded lobsters, not from shipping. As of March 14, his lobsters were going for $8.75/lb., or 12 lbs. for $105. He charges $10 for the container and $2.50 for two gel packs. Fed Ex to eastern North Carolina $113.77 for a total of $231.25. Portrie said of the Fed Ex charge, “You’re paying for the service, not the weight.”
The shippers all include basic cooking instructions, and they advise customers to be aware of weather: planes often don’t fly in snowstorms. They suggest always having a Plan B and they all tell horror stories. One dealer got a call from a woman who called to ask why the lobster tasted tough. She said she’d cooked it for three minutes. She said she’d stopped when the lobster turned red. Another dealer said some people throw the shipped lobsters away because they’re green.