As New York City, New York, U.S.A.-based seafood monger Lobster Place celebrates 50 years in business, the company has rebranded as LP Seafood and Specialty.
The iconic marketplace, founded in 1974, was one of the first spots to offer live lobster in New York City. Since then, the company has evolved to meet the shifting tastes of its clients, which include numerous Michelin-starred restaurants, legacy hospitality properties, caterers, and retail stores.
"[My] mother and father started the company by literally running to Maine and bringing back live lobsters to their tiny store on the Upper West Side," CEO Ian MacGregor said. "At that time, it was really novel to sell live lobster, so Lobster Place was an appropriate name.”
Over time, the business has evolved and expanded.
What was initially a small neighborhood shop soon became a wholesale operation in Lower Manhattan’s Chelsea Market in the 1990s, at which point “the Lobster Place sort of became a misnomer for the business. But, [we] had been in business for 20 years at that point, and we had some brand equity," MacGregor said.
“When I took over in 2002, the food industry and the restaurant industry were taking on a whole new sort of cultural significance, and our business grew tremendously. Lobster became a smaller part of our business, and all the other products we were selling became more and more important,” he said.
The brand then opened a retail business in Chelsea Market and, ultimately, moved its wholesale business to Hunts Point in the northern borough of the Bronx.
This move, MacGregor said, led to some brand confusion among customers.
“Effectively, we had become two businesses,” he said.
He recalled that as the retail business grew in notoriety, salespeople for the company found themselves having to field questions about where the wholesale operation was and whether Lobster Place sold more than lobster.
“As they say, if you’re explaining, you’re losing,” MacGregor said.
All of this necessitated the rebrand, according to MacGregor, who explained that the update comes three years after Lobster Place merged with Gourmet Cargo, a boutique specialty foods distributor, as part of a broader strategy to meet the needs of its diverse client list, including some of New York City’s most demanding chefs, many of whom place seafood orders more than once a day.
In order to maintain that demanding client base, the company has long been known for its ability to deliver orders of fresh, live, and frozen seafood from its 30,000-square-foot, SQF-certified distribution center to locations within a 150-mile radius of the Bronx facility in under six hours.
This rapid delivery model will now extend to LP Seafood and Specialty's full line of gourmet products, allowing restaurants, hotels, and caterers in the ultra-competitive, fast-paced market to receive orders of both seafood and specialty foods with the same quick turnaround they’ve come to expect from Lobster Place.
The rebrand also reflects the company’s evolution into a one-stop-shop that can offer its clients an alternative to broadline distributors. Its current product portfolio includes a growing list of over 3,700 products, including olive oils, vinegars, beverages, pastries, dairy, and charcuterie.
“The time has finally come to reorient the marketplace around who we are and all the things we’re doing,” MacGregor said.
As the company expands, MacGregor emphasized that its history, brand notoriety, and centrality to the New York market would remain key to its appeal.
LP Seafood and Specialty is a subsidiary of LP Brands, which also operates Manhattan’s Lobster Place Seafood Hall and the Cull & Pistol Oyster Bar in Chelsea Market.
