Nor’Easter Oyster Company founders Jacqueline Clarke and Sean Corcoran began their value-added oyster company by trying to solve a problem they had noticed aquaculture producers in the U.S. state of Maine struggling with: what to do with oysters that were too large, clustered, or too misshapen for the raw bar market?
Or, in other words, what should the industry do with what Clarke and Corcoran call “raw bar rejects?”
Clarke told SeafoodSource at the 2025 Seafood Expo North America (SENA), which took place 16 to 18 March in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A., that 48 percent of Maine’s oyster farms are younger than 5 years old. This presented Nor’Easter with an opportunity to fill an emerging gap in the market that was unavailable elsewhere in the U.S.
“What we’ve seen is that as [Maine’s] farmers are now looking to scale, there are some farmers who are concerned about local market saturation. Other farmers have oysters that have grown too big or are cosmetically unique and they can’t be sold to … raw bars,” Clarke said. “Sean and I looked at other places in the country that have different markets for unique oysters and looked at value-added shucking markets; they don’t exist in Maine. Their presence on the East Coast, specifically the New England region, is nowhere near where it is [elsewhere in the country].”
Clarke and Cocoran studied the Maine market and found that turning these oysters into value-added products not only provided Nor’Easter with a business opportunity, but also offered oyster farms a new value stream.
Because oysters destined for the value-added market do not have to look uniform, farmers can grow them at the bottom of their lines and they don’t have to turn them. In effect, Nor’Easter offers farmers a valuable opportunity to increase their production without increasing labor costs.
“[These oysters] are less labor-intensive and [have] less equipment costs and labor costs for farmers. So, it’s a great way to scale their business by creating a new market for value-added oysters,” Clarke said.
Nor’Easter’s oyster-processing program is both collaborative and traditional ...
