LIKE CHICKEN Linda Bean owns this wharf in Port Clyde, Me., and others. Her plan to mass-market lobsters has opponents.
EYEING a vivid heap of buoys on her wharf here, Linda L. Bean hatched another idea for her burgeoning lobster empire.
The buoys would be ideal decorations for Ms. Bean’s next lobster-roll stand, in Delray Beach, Fla. She was ready, as ever, to write a check. Money has been no object for Ms. Bean, an heiress to the L. L. Bean fortune, in the two-plus years since she plunged into the struggling Maine lobster industry. To ensure a supply for her lobster-roll chain and a supermarket line of lobster products, Ms. Bean has spent millions to acquire and upgrade three wharves and buying stations — where several dozen lobstermen sell their catch — as well as a processing plant on the state’s midcoast.
She is opening a “lobster academy” for chefs, is seeking to trademark new names for lobster products (she thinks “claws” sound scary) and pushing, against the wishes of many here, for the state’s lobster catch to be certified as sustainable by a London-based environmental group.
Her goal, she said, is to save Maine’s most iconic industry by ending its dependence on Canadian processors and, under her Linda Bean’s Perfect Maine label, to mass market Maine lobster the way Perdue does chicken. Click Here to Return to Glenmere Main Page “What we’re trying to do is raise it up a notch in terms of identification as being very special,” she said, adding that too many Americans unwittingly eat “impostor” lobster from Canada. “They have to trust my name.” Ms. Bean, whose grandfather founded L. L. Bean, is banking on that name and a gene for smart marketing, she said, as well as on a fast-growing work force of locals who know their way around lobster. With their help, she estimates that she will buy about 5 percent of the state’s catch this year, a striking amount given her newcomer status. Besides the wharves, she owns a warehouse, several trucks and a pound, where thousands of live lobsters can be stored for months.
Nobody has complained yet of a monopoly in the making, but Ms. Bean, 68, is not universally loved in the insular, male-dominated lobster industry, or in Maine as a whole.
A deeply religious, conservative Republican who lost two races for Congress, she has raised hackles among some residents by fighting gay rights and casinos. Some in the lobster business question her hostility toward Canadian processors, with whom they have long relationships, and whether the ideas she seems to churn out at warp speed will work.
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“She’s only been in the business three years and you’re telling me she’s got all the answers?” asked Peter McAleney, a lobster dealer in Portland who is president of the Maine Import-Export Lobster Dealers’ Association. “We’re already branded — it’s known as king of the sea, nothing has changed.”
Others say Ms. Bean’s strategies are worth a shot, especially since she has the money to see them through at a time when few others want to invest in such a battered industry. Price and demand have hit their lowest points in years because of the economic crisis, leaving an oversupply of a luxury product that many say should be diversified. Even the Maine Lobster Promotion Council, the industry’s marketing arm, has a budget of only $400,000 a year.
“If Linda can brand her little part of the industry and do a good job marketing it,” said Gerald Cushman, a fifth-generation lobsterman in Port Clyde, “I can only think it will help everyone else. While the rest of us are nickel-and-diming, she’s able to jump right in.”
Ms. Bean, who had no experience in the industry before buying her first wharf in 2007, said she stepped in because nobody else was moving decisively to solve its problems.
“It doesn’t seem like anyone is focused on the severity and the immediacy of the problem,” she said, “and what could be done better.”
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Focused she is, but how Ms. Bean keeps track of her projects is anyone’s guess. Foremost is the Linda Bean’s Perfect Maine Lobster Roll chain, which she aims to expand from 2 stands and 3 restaurants in Maine to at least 100 franchises nationwide in a year. In addition to her signature lobster roll — a quarter-pound of meat, topped with herbs, on a grilled, buttered roll spread with mayo — the menu will include Linda Bean’s Port Clyde Lobster Stew and Linda Bean’s Lobster Cuddlers, the name she is seeking to trademark for claws with drawn butter......,,
SEE THE ORIGINAL NEW YORK TIMES STORY AT
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