July 22, 2013 — It's not the kind of publicity lobster marketers necessarily would have wanted. During a June 7 airing of the radio show Boston Public Radio, hosts Jim Braude and Margery Eagen spent a good 10 minutes chuckling over the fact that a Walgreens store in Boston was selling live lobsters. The pairing of a drug store and live lobster was just too unappetizing for them, and they compared it to a Wisconsin taxidermist shop that sells cheese.
"Are you OK buying a live pound-and-a-halfer next to a display of foot powder?" Braude asked. Eagen wondered if you had to fess up to party guests about buying the lobster at a drug store. Boston Magazine also ran a tongue-in-cheek blogpost about the Walgreens lobster. Before the end of the month, Walgreens pulled the lobster from its Boston store, but it continues to sell live lobster in three locations in Portland and Ellsworth, according to a Walgreens spokesman.
It may be an odd way for a drug store to branch out, but it's emblematic of the crossroads where the Maine lobster brand finds itself. Lobster landings are up, way up, from historic figures. Maine lobstermen caught 123.3 million pounds of lobster during the 2012 season, which represents a 15% increase from 2011 and an 88% increase from landings two decades ago, according to Maine Department of Marine Resources figures. The glut in the market has driven prices down to the lowest lobstermen have seen in 18 years. Meanwhile, warm water temperatures have caused lobsters to shed their shells much earlier than usual, meaning lobstermen have been catching soft-shelled lobsters, which don't ship well, before tourists arrive to eat them. There's a need to move a lot of lobster through the marketplace without devolving the lobster brand into a commodity, says Marianne LaCroix, acting executive director of the Maine Lobster Promotion Council.
"The challenge is that we have a premium brand product and there's a lot of it in the marketplace," LaCroix says.
Lobster industry stakeholders agree that the future of lobster marketing will have to include an approach that expands the marketplace for Maine lobster while still maintaining its cache among culinary circles. That market expansion has taken on an improvisatory feel in the last couple of years, as lobstermen and lobster dealers have had to scramble to unload their swelled landings. In 2012, it was common to see lobstermen alongside the road selling their lobsters for $2.99 a pound from the back of pickup trucks. Coastal communities organized cash mobs to buy lobster at break-even prices from local lobstermen. Chain restaurants, from Panera to McDonald's to Papa Gino's, all began offering the now ubiquitous lobster roll. While there is some value in exposing more palettes to the taste of lobster and it was vital to find a market for all that extra lobster, there is a downside to marketing it in mass quantities, says Emily Lane, vice president of sales at the Calendar Islands Maine Lobster Co.
Craig Idlebrook, a writer based in Massachusetts, can be reached at editorial@mainebiz.biz.
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