Harbor Fish Market

by Sandra Dinsmore

Located at 9 Custom House Wharf, an active commercial fishing wharf since the early 1800’s. The wharf is very much the working waterfront. The market sells truly fresh seafood in an authentic historic market on an historic wharf. Marjorie Mills photo

I first heard about Portland’s Harbor Fish Market from the owner of a Connecticut fish market who has been in the business for over 40 years. He raved about Harbor Fish Market, saying, “It’s just what you want to see.” Consequently, when I walked into Harbor Fish Market I found exactly what I expected: a plain, old-fashioned fish market with many varieties of good, fresh fish and shellfish. If there was a smell, it was that of fresh fish or maybe just the ocean. And Harbor Fish offers a surprising number of species. That part of the market is right up-to-date. Each display carries with it a label describing the fish, the price, where it came from, and that the staff will cut and filet the fish for customers.

The market carries different groups of products, as co-owner Nick Alfiero explained. “One is live: live lobsters, crabs, that sort of thing. Then we deal with all kinds of farmed products: salmon, etc.” It also carries what Nick calls managed resource products, such as mussels on a rope on a raft. He said, “I call it a managed resource because they’re living in their own environment. They’re not in pens, cages, or anything else. Oysters are the same way. They put them on the bottom of the Damariscotta River, where they’re really doing their own thing, propagating, eating, whatever they do. They’re not really farmed,” he explained. The seedlings are placed there, but they’re not fed or given antibiotics. A fourth group is called Wild Caughts, which include New England groundfish such as cod, haddock, flounder, and halibut. Swordfish, tunas and others make up the fifth group – import species.

A variety of fresh oysters and clams both local and regional. Fishermen’s Voice photo

Nick explained the only so-called “processing” the Alfieros do, saying, “We take a whole fish like a haddock and we filet it and we may take the skin off.” That’s it. Nick and his younger brother Michael (they lost their middle brother Ben earlier in the year) feel strongly about selling absolutely fresh fish and shellfish. Most fish is sold within two days and when newer, fresher fish comes in, it replaces what fish is left. The Alfiero brothers sometimes freeze older, still perfectly good fish and give it to the local food bank.

Although fish in the retail store moves fast, fish in the wholesale part of the market may move even faster, partly because Harbor Fish Market supplies about 90 percent of Portland’s restaurants and partly because Harbor Fish ships up into central Maine, up the coast about as far as Bath, and down the coast as far as New Hampshire. The Alfieros keep five or six trucks on the road.

Nick recalled, “We were one of the innovators of shipping lobsters on Federal Express. We worked with a company called Tech-Pac in the ’80s, and we developed a box that would hold lobsters and a gel-pack and that whole thing. We started working with Fed Ex, and they decided that they could do it; they could ship product like that. Now it’s blossomed into a whole industry: freighting lobsters around the country.”

The Alfieros do not ship out of the country. They just ship lobsters and fresh fish and shellfish throughout the United States. Nick said, “A lot of people in, let’s say, Denver, or some place, can’t get good haddock; that sort of thing. We don’t export,” he stated. “We stay in our own little confines where we’re comfortable. We recognize what we do well and we stick to it.”

Nick Alfiero in his office at Harbor Fish Market on Union Wharf, Portland, ME. Nick is one of three brothers who carried on the business their father started in the 1960s. Fishermen’s Voice photo

Nick and Mike’s own little confine is Portland. Both parents, Ben Sr. and Gloria, first-generation Italians, were born and raised in Portland, as were their three sons, Nick, Ben Jr., and Mike. In 1968, Ben Sr. joined his brother John in a then-small fish market on Custom House Wharf. The building had housed a fish market since the early 1900s. Ten years later, all three of Ben’s sons had joined this old-fashioned business full-time and the business had started to grow. Nick said he thinks it was born of family values, and that the brothers have maintained those values. In fact, Nick said, “If I had to use one phrase that sums up what we do and how we do it, it would be ‘family values.’ We operate that way; we sell that way; we buy that way.” At 66, and because he says he still really loves it, Nick still puts in 10- to 12-hour days, getting up at 4 a.m. and spending an hour at the gym. By 5:30 he’s talking to off-loaders in Boston and at 6 a.m. he’s using his phone and computer to access the Portland, Gloucester, and New Bedford fish auctions.

Display case in one half of the market. The variety, local and fresh seafood qualities common here have become rarities for most American seafood consumers. Fishermen’s Voice photo

His brother Michael, who’s 57, keeps much the same hours. Although the brothers work as a team behind the scenes overseeing the strategic planning of the business, Mike purchases all the salmon products and such shellfish products as crabmeat, oysters, and clams. He also purchases all the big fish: the swordfish, tuna, and halibut. Ron Brown has been cutting all the specialty fish for Harbor Fish Market for 30 years. Nick purchases all the lobster and local groundfish.

Their brother Ben oversaw the handling of the retail store. After he died and because they have such good, long-term employees – they have grown to 45 – the brothers say they learned to delegate authority.

“Zack Yates coordinates our food service,” said Mike. “He’s the main contact for us for all the restaurants. He also does frozen buying.” Dan Kraus and Ron Smith run the retail business. They also purchase some of the specialty retail items such as smoked products and a lot of the jarred and canned goods. Alice Warner handles all the airfreight business. Mike said that Laura Fontaine, who manages the administrative and Human Resources departments, helps the brothers handle all the finances, such as recently transferring the payroll from doing it in-house to a payroll service and other employee concerns such as medical insurance. “We recently implemented a 401K program,” Mike said, “and we are slowly transferring some of our internal infrastructure to computerization.”

Fresh whole fish display. Most fish is sold in two days. Any fish not sold in two days is donated to a local food bank. Fishermen’s Voice photo

They’ve done all this modernizing while remaining the old-fashioned fish market their father and uncle started back in the 1960s. “Nick and I,” Mike said, “it’s our responsibility to not change it, but to make sure it stays as nice as it is.” And he gives a lot of credit to their staff. “They drink the Kool-Aid,” he said. “They believe in what we’re doing.”

The retail customers believe, too. After Ben, Jr. died, three or four hundred people attended a celebration of his life. One man who spoke surprised the brothers when he said, “I don’t know the Alfieros personally. I knew Ben from coming in the store, and I’ve been coming in that store for 30 years. And what your family has done for this town with this store is just amazing. It’s not just your store. It’s our store.”

Harbor Fish had become a Portland institution without the Alfieros even realizing it. “It’s not that we didn’t appreciate it before,” Mike said, “but it really was an eye-opener. I really do appreciate what we’ve accomplished. It’s been quite a trip.”