How We Did It Luke’s Lobster
Step into one of the 39 Luke’s Lobster locations from New York City to Taiwan and it’s easy to pretend you’re visiting a classic New England seafood shack: Diners order at simple wooden counters, sit at rough-hewn tables, and munch on a limited (and exceedingly tasty) menu of lobster, crab, and shrimp rolls and chowders, accompanied by simple bags of potato chips. But the Saco, Maine–and Brooklyn-based company’s restaurants are actually the last step in an extensive, tightly integrated seabed-totable operation—one that nearly broke the founders, Luke Holden and Ben Conniff, when they first attempted to set it up.
When I was growing up, my father owned and ran one of the largest lobster processors in North America. It was an
