July 5, 2016 — TENANTS HARBOR, Maine — Nearly seven years after selling his first lobster roll, Cape Elizabeth native Luke Holden has opened the first Luke’s Lobster in Maine, a seasonal shack on Millers Wharf in Tenants Harbor.
Why did Holden, a 32-year-old who splits his time between New York City and Biddeford, choose to make his Maine debut in this scenic but out-of-the-way spot in coastal Knox County, 10 miles south of Thomaston? For the lobster, of course.
The Tenants Harbor shack actually sits on the wharf where 20 local lobstermen who fish Penobscot Bay will land over half a million pounds of lobster this year.
“This is about as close to the source as you can get,” said Holden, gesturing out to the lobsters sunk under the buy float just off the dock. “High-quality new shell Maine lobster. That’s my secret.”
But Luke’s has been buying lobster from a dozen Maine docks since he opened his first shack in New York City’s East Village in 2009. He could have opened a shack in any one of those places.
If he was going to come home to Maine, where most fishing villages have a good, if not great, local lobster shack, Holden wanted to do something different, something that would help the industry.
Then the owners of the wharf – the Miller brothers – and their lobstering pals gave him an opportunity to do that.
At Millers Wharf, Luke’s Lobster is now more than just a buyer. Luke’s sister company, Cape Seafood, is the guaranteed buyer of every lobster hauled by the 20 members of the newly founded Tenants Harbor Fisherman’s Co-op.
In a cooperative, fishermen bond together to split the overhead costs of running a dock, such as insurance, electricity and staffing the buy float, where boats unload their daily hauls for underwater storage.
The Tenants Harbor co-op is built to make money by shortening a lobster’s route from trap to table, eliminating middlemen such as lobster dealers and redistributing that savings to members.