Bayley’s Lobster Pound

by Sandra Dinsmore

Bayley’s Lobster Pound in Scarborough at Pine Point. The business has been there since 1915 and remains in the family of its founders. Prout’s Neck is on the horizon. Bayley’s Lobster Pound photo

Bayley’s Lobster Pound, at Pine Point, in Scarborough, is celebrating its hundredth year in business. Susan Bayley Clough’s (pronounced like plow) great-grandparents began this retail lobster pound back in 1915. Sue grew up on the property and recalls wandering in and out of the pound, visiting her parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents as a toddler. At age eight she started picking lobster and learning the family business. She always knew it would eventually be hers if she wanted it. Shortly after graduating from Dartmouth in 1988 with a major in English literature, Sue said, “I missed the family business enough to come back and join my dad permanently.”

Sue worked with her father for 22 years (he retired in 2010 and visits daily), during which time they developed Bayley’s shipping capability. Bayley’s Lobster Pound ships via UPS Next Day Air all over the country and has been taking Internet orders for years. Bayley’s packs its lobster products live or prepares and cooks them on the premises the day it ships them; UPS picks up orders each afternoon.

2009 was a big year for Bayley’s Lobster Pound. Sue and her father enlarged and remodeled Bayley’s retail store, which sells live and cooked lobster as well as many other varieties of seafood and, while keeping the old footprint of the Bayley’s building, they also brought it up to date.

In November of 2009 Vincent Clough, who started in the fish business at age eleven, joined Bayley’s Lobster Pound after having his own company, Preble Fish, which carried lobster as part of his product line. Vincent also did some work with Inland and Garbo, which added to his knowledge of the lobster industry. In addition to working in the kitchen, in the tank room, and with inventory, Vincent has helped Sue expand various areas of the business. (Sue handles Human Resources and bookkeeping.)

Sue said, “It was wonderful to find someone who appreciated what I did for work and partnered with me to take it to the next level. I don’t know what I would have done without him.” (Both Susan and Vincent had been previously married to people who were not in the lobster business. They married in 2011 and two years later produced their daughter Emma.)

But because Bayley’s retail store is open seven days a week from April 1 to October 18, closed until November 27, then open until January 3, 2016, both Sue and Vincent work every single day except for Christmas. Sue said, “It’s very long hours, especially the way we do it, retail. It’s weekends, it’s nights. It takes a lot of your life.” Vincent added, “We’re busy when others are off.” On the other hand, the Cloughs have three months to rest and plan ahead.

In 2012 Vincent helped Sue create Bayley’s Bait Shed Restaurant and bar. They limited the menu to sandwiches, chowders, steamers, and lobster dinners and served everything in disposable containers packed for take-out.

Current owner Sue Bayley’s great grandparents Steve and Ella Bayley at the restaurant in the 1940’s. Bayley’s Lobster Pound photo

By 2014, Sue and Vincent had reduced the waste by changing their restaurant from just a dock where people could eat their lobster or whatever they’d bought at the retail store to a full table-service restaurant and bar that no longer served on disposables.

In May of 2014, they opened Emma’s Eats, a food take-out on the beach. It is open from Memorial Day to Labor Day from 11 to 5. In July and August, it stays open till 7 p.m. on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.

By 2015 Bayley’s Lobster Pound—not to be confused with Bayley’s Seafood Restaurant down the road, owned and operated by another branch of the family—had developed many ways of selling lobster and seafood.

1. Wholesale sales of live lobster to restaurants and other lobster dealers

2. A retail lobster and seafood store

3. Internet retail sales of live and cooked lobster, value-added lobster and seafood products, beef, deserts, and condiments shipped all over the country. It’s one-stop shopping.

4. The Bait Shed: a ten-table full-service restaurant and bar on the dock. It opens at 11 a.m. and usually closes around 10 p.m. or when the last person leaves

5. Emma’s Eats: a beach food takeout on the beach

Vincent said, “We have a multi-pronged decision that goes into what we’re going to need to pay for lobster, and it can be anything. It can be the price of lobster meat that’s going to go into a lobster roll or lobster stew, or a lobster dinner, or some of the wholesale lobsters that we sell.”

Sue explained some of the prongs, giving examples of questions and answers:

Question: “Do we want more boats [to buy from]?” Answer: ”Paying a higher price allows us more access to product [lobster] during key seasons.”

Question: “Are we going to sell all of these lobsters in a retail form?” Answer: “If they are all going through our retail market, we can pay more for them because we can get the mark up.”

Question: “Are the lobster going into value-added products such as lobster stew or lobster meat?” Answer: “There is an even better profit margin associated with these products.”

Question: “What are the lobsters going to cost if we buy them from another wholesaler?” Answer: “If we pay the boats $.25/lb. less than what we can buy them for from another dealer, we are still winning.” And finally, “What’s the weather forecast?” The answer: “If bad weather is coming, dealers will pay more to make sure to have product [lobster on hand.]”

Sue explained further, “We’re lucky in the sense that a lot of restaurants aren’t lucky enough to be buying from harvesters directly, so they’re not getting that benefit. But we actually not only buy from harvesters, we do our own lobster meat processing and then we push [the processed lobster] back out the door retail. We’re very lucky that way.” (On an average summer day Bayley’s sells 2,500 lbs. of lobsters.)

But, on the other hand, Sue said, “The problem [of the shipping cost] arises when lobster prices go very low and the AP will pick up the news story. People in, say, California see a news story that says lobsters are, say, $4/lb., which is really that newspapers are reporting the boat price [the price paid to fishermen per lb. of lobster]. They’ll call me and say, ‘How much are lobsters?’ I’ll say, let’s say, ‘$6/lb.’ They’ll say, ‘Great. Send me a lobster. I’m in California.’ And I’ll tell them one lobster shipped to California is $70-$80. Then they lose their mind. I’ll say, ‘You have to understand. There’s one lobster, there’s a three-lb. gel-pack. There’s a two-lb. box. And then there’s the shipping overnight to California. It’s very expensive.’ Now, if you ship more lobsters, you’re still using the same gel-pack and box, it’s more cost-effective. For example: if you ship one lobster [to California] it’s $80. If you ship four, it’s $118. So you’re maximizing the use of the box and the gel-pack.

“But people don’t understand that when they read a news story. I think a lot of it is because a lot of companies, when they put prices on the Internet, will say that shipping is free when, really, you’re paying the shipping as part of the product. If I tell someone on the phone that six lobsters are going to cost them $137 delivered to their house, very often they have no problem with that. If I tell them that the six lobsters cost $37 and the $100 is for shipping, then they get upset. They don’t like hearing what the shipping charge is. So that’s something we have to combat all the time. We just try to combine the two together so people get a total price. Depending on where you are, it doesn’t sound like a bad deal. In California, if you get six lobsters delivered to your door for $137, it’s not that bad. For someone in Massachusetts, it’s a different story.”

In the end, you, the reader, have several choices: if you’re in Maine, you can take yourself to Pine Point in Scarborough, buy some lobster or a seafood product at Bayley’s retail store, or order something from the menu at Bayley’s Bait Shed restaurant and eat it right there on the dock, looking out on the Scarborough and Nonesuch rivers, or if you live far away, but you’ve been entranced by the photos you’ve seen on the Bayley’s Lobster Pound website (www.bayleys.com), you’re just going to have to pony up for that gel-pack and box and shipping charges from Scarborough, Maine, to where you live. Just remember, you won’t be dealing with some fly-by-night company you can’t count on. You’ll be dealing with a hundred-year-old company run by its fourth-generation family owner and her husband, parents of the fifth generation. That’s kind of hard to beat.