October 26th, 2016 — Your next fresh lobster dinner, drizzled in butter and lemon, might crack your budget.
Restaurants are having to fork over more money this year to get their hands on prized Maine lobsters, and that means your dinner bill could soar to $60 a plate. Blame robust demand.
The coast-to-coast craze of lobster roll food trucks has made lobster more affordable, and abroad the appetite for the crustaceans is growing as well, experts say.
“The demand for this product now is really unprecedented,” said Annie Tselikis, marketing director for Maine Coast Co., a live lobster wholesaler based in York, Maine. She spoke Monday just before boarding a flight for a seafood trade show in South Korea, a major customer of North American lobsters along with China and others.
Live lobster prices on a wholesale basis reached $8.50 for a 1.25-pound hard-shell lobster in August, the highest level in a decade, according to Urner Barry, a leading seafood price tracker and a partner in Seafood News.
You’d have to go back to 2008 for the last time lobsters were even above $5 for this time of year, said John Sackton, editor and publisher of Seafood News. Since that time they’ve fluctuated between $3.90 and $4.85 until this year when they’re up again over $7.
“Lobster demand usually follows the stock market and general economy,” said Bob Bayer, director of the Lobster Institute at the University of Maine. “When the economy is good, lobster demand is good.”