Maine lobster fisheries faced a drop in demand for lobster after the COVID-19 pandemic forced restaurants, cruise ships and casinos to close. Although the lobsters kept coming, the buyers did not. “Fishermen’s market crashed and the price went down,” says Paul Anderson, executive director of the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries, a non profit located in Stonington, ME.
Anderson and his team’s mission was to support struggling fisheries and fishermen who had an abundance of lobster meat on their hands. They came up with an idea to use the meat for school lunches, since Maine schools still provided lunches to families although in person school was not occurring. The meat was delivered to cafeterias where the school workers made lobster rolls and sent them out to eager families.
“It was a neat way to honor the fisheries and give the fishermen a way to donate their product and take a tax break on it,” said Anderson.
Across the country, Russel Deutsch, owner of Old Port Lobster shack located in Redwood City, was one of the few buyers of lobster during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the lobster supply was available, Deutsch still had other arrangements to make to keep his restaurant running. Unlike other seafood restaurants in the area who use locally sourced catch, Deutsch flies his seafood including lobster, crab, and oysters directly from Maine, bringing an authentic East Coast style to California. The live lobsters must be flown overnight, as they start to die after a day of being out of water.
His main airline, Southwest, stopped taking freights, leaving Deutsch in need of a new airline.
“It did get a little bit tricky at times, but there’s always somebody taking the freights.”
Fortunately for Deutsch, he was able to switch to American airlines right away.
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the restaurant faced restrictions on indoor and outdoor dining, so Deutsch utilized a delivery service called Clover, which allowed customers to order through Lobster Shack’s website and pay online. This allowed customers to avoid interacting with people at the register and handing over their credit card. Customers were able to get their seafood fix without the risk of passing money back and forth, and social distancing guidelines were followed.
Also delivery services including Doordash, Grubhub, and UberEats were still going strong.
“We stuck in there with the delivery, delivery grew,” said Deutsch.
With California reopening, Old Port Lobster shack is seeing an increase in customers, many who have felt deprived of dining out and business has mostly returned back to normal.
Eager Eater 