Local catch

Sean McCarthy

Sean McCarthyWith decades of experience as a local fisherman and businessman, he had the knowledge and insights to create a first-rate seafood market. And in June of this year, the 61-year-old will continue expanding on his lifelong passion for bringing quality seafood to Westport and the region at large, as construction continues on a second wide-ranging market at this 915 Main Street location. Benefitting from his experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic, Manchester isn’t just building on his business – he’s building on his reputation.

“This business was started 50 years ago by a local fisherman and it’s going to continue to be owned and operated by a local fisherman,” he says. “I know this town and the fishermen in this area, I’ve been fishing here all of my adult life. I can bring my knowledge of seafood to this area.”

Manchester’s plans for Westport Lobster’s expansion are to open an additional market located atop his current retail market. The aim of the new market is to offer customers more than the variety of seafood he already sells, including prepared foods and complimentary items for entire meals to be enjoyed at the location or at home. A one-stop-shop for seafood dining.

“If you’re coming home from work and you want to have fish tacos, you can buy all the ingredients to go home and have something you can make yourself,” he suggests. “If you don’t feel like doing that, you can pull out a seafood pie or a lobster salad or some baked stuffed shrimp.

“We want to offer things that you can’t find anywhere else – maybe enjoy a bagel, salmon, and a good cup of coffee. We’ll have prepared foods such as lobster rolls and chowder, and items from local farms such as produce, dairy, and baked goods.”

Manchester has benefitted from the lessons he learned during the pandemic. During this time he began servicing customers in the areas of prepared foods such as grab-and-go items and curbside delivery – a trend he expects to continue.

“We picked up a lot of business during COVID and the public taught us a lot about things they wanted,” he says. “No one was going out to dinner, so we were inundated with customers. A lot of people asked us about prepared foods and we were doing a lot of take-out. We realized there were probably some things that we needed to take a look at when the pandemic was over, and we’ve stuck with a lot of the things we started doing during COVID.”

But there were other lessons.

“A lot of people realized during the pandemic that staying home and making a good meal can have more value than going out to dinner all the time. A lot of husbands and wives are both working now, neither one stays home and cooks, so it’s nice for them to have a place like Westport Lobster that they can walk into and grab a menu card that tells them what ingredients to buy. You can grab a basket and put your meal together, and you can take it home and cook it. You can also enjoy prepared foods that you can take home and pop in the oven. There’s a lot of interest in good, organic food.”

Fisherman's pantry

There’s also interest in the renovations taking place at Westport Lobster.

“For the last two or three years, a lot of people have been asking us about the work going on at our second floor,” he says. “People have seen what we’ve been doing, asking what’s going on. They want to know what we’re doing.”

But the renovations will only continue to bring greater shopping experiences to customers.

“When I bought this building after 50 years, it was in pretty poor condition,” he says. “Since then we’ve stripped it, painted it, cleaned it all out, and brought in fresh, quality seafood. We’ve built a pretty good customer base. We’re doing all the things that people are looking for. People will be even happier once we open the second floor.”

But COVID brought a change to Manchester’s original plans for the building. After purchasing it, he intended to make renovations to the first floor as well as the second. However, he soon realized he had to keep the retail market open to the public once the pandemic took hold.

“During the pandemic, construction to the second floor was postponed because of the importance of keeping the firstfloor market open to the public,” he says. “So shortly after the second floor is open and running this June, we’ll remodel the downstairs seafood retail market so that we won’t have to shut the entire building down.”

Fresh food, fresh ideas

Since 2010, Manchester has been the owner of the wholesale seafood company, Liberty Lobster, in New Bedford. The establishment unloads seafood from fishing boats and distributes that seafood to businesses throughout the Northeast and across the country. Manchester uses the relationships that he built with other boat owners while he was fishing to purchase their products directly from their boats. Before Covid, Liberty Lobster was shipping a large amount of seafood to Asia and Europe as well. Manchester’s mornings begin at Liberty Lobster, where he spends the first half of the day unloading fishing boats and buying and selling seafood from his New Bedford location. His afternoons are spent at his Westport location.

Manchester was born and bred on Drift Road in Westport. He has had a relationship with the sea since his youth.

“When I’d get home from school I would go quahogging, scalloping, and fishing to make money,” he recalls. I had a boat for transportation until I was old enough to get a license. This limited my travel but fostered my love of working the water. I took classes in Marketing and Management at Bristol Community College, and four days after my last final exam I took off on a fishing boat and never looked back.” sea N MCC arthy has been a freelance journalist for 35 years. He lives in New Bedford.

After 25 years on the seas, and as the father of three daughters, Manchester sold his fleet of fishing boats. But it “only made sense” to stay in the fishing industry that he devoted so much of his life to.

For more information, visit westportlobstercompany.com.