HOW TO BUILD A SEAFOOD EMPIRE
Rock Lobster’s Matt Dean Pettit shares his claw to tail secrets,
Matt Dean Pettit is racing around Rock Lobster like a man on fire.
He’s wiping tables, arranging oysters, choosing music, straightening place settings, seating patrons who walk into the Ossington Ave. restaurant just as the hostess slips away. And spends seven minutes on the phone convincing a would-be customer she’s not too old to enjoy this young, hip place.
“You’ll have a great time,” Pettit, 35, says. “Doesn’t matter how old you are!”
The restaurateur hasn’t paused to take a breath since 2012.
In the past two years, this Midland, Ont., boy has parlayed a humble lobster roll — lobster, mayo, Old Bay spice — into a seafood empire: four restaurants — with another in the works — a lucrative deal with Sobeys that’s put his name on products across Ontario, a two-year contract as “chef ambassador” with beer brand Samuel Adams, a Food Network website and TV show yet to debut and now a book.
The Great Lobster Cookbook: From Claw to Tail, which hit stores last month, is 200 or so pages of wisdom and tips for enjoying the hardshelled bottom feeder at home.
The recipes, from chefs including Claudio Aprile and Mark McEwan, have catchy names, such as Oyster Rock Lobstah Fellah and Bang’n Coconut Curry Lobster Tails.
Pettit, something of a foodie rock star, is heading to the Maritimes this week to kick off a cross-country tour — a rarity in book launches these days.
“I never thought I’d write a book in my entire life,” he says. “But life’s short. You gotta roll with it.”
That’s sort of what Pettit is doing as dinner service begins. He swivels atop one of the high stools in front of the restaurant’s floor-to-ceiling windows.
Every few seconds he’s spotted — by a friend, fellow restaurateur or fan who smiles shyly. He smiles back. And waves or gives the thumbs up. Pettit’s always had an entrepreneurial spark. In elementary school, he sold the toppings off his pizza to friends for 10 or 25 cents a piece and when he was 6, suggested turning a bake sale into a raffle because, he reasoned, selling tickets would make more money than selling individual pieces of cake.
“He’s always had that independent spirit, strong convictions,” says his dad, artist Donald Pettit. “And a great deal of energy.”
Working in restaurants was a nobrainer for this go-go-go kid. Pettit’s attention turns this evening to the lobster poutine, fresh out of the deep fryer. He steals a fry. To test it, of course. “Got to make sure it’s crispy,” he says.
The only time Pettit’s voice quickens with irritation is at the suggestion — a criticism that comes up now and then — that his success in the food industry isn’t deserved because he isn’t a trained chef. He has spent 23 years working in kitchens and hospitality in general, he says, from dish washer to line cook to server to manager. Pettit studied sports management at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ont., and, as a rambunctious person who was always organizing and socializing, bet he’d be the next Jerry Maguire.
Then Labatt came calling, offering him first a part-time job as a beer representative, then a full-time gig to “blow up the brand.” As a sales manager at Moet & Chandon, and after that, in sales, marketing and innova- tions at Diageo, a high-profile luxury beverage company, Pettit learned the marketing ropes and was always itching to break out on his own. As a child, he loved seafood, especially eating with his hands. And he got an inkling that crustaceans might be part of his future when he met a lobster fisherman on a trip to New Brunswick for a friend’s wedding and fell hard for the “east coast kitchen party vibe.” But it didn’t all come together until the first-ever Toronto Underground Market. As Pettit walked among the booths at the Evergreen Brickworks, eating his way through the 2011 TUM, he remembers thinking: “I can do this with lobster.” That day, Pettit locked himself in a room and emerged 14 hours later, clutching his business “manifesto.” It was 35 pages of entrepreneurial play-by-play. With $3,300 savings, Pettit started a lobster wholesale business, bought enough food for one event, kitchen supplies and equipment at Kensington Market’s Tap Phong Trading Co. He built wooden tables in the parking garage of his downtown condominium. “It was the last money I had,” he says, adding it was “a life-changing moment.” Pettit also has good timing. The city’s lobster scene was stuck in the 1950s — confined to an aging restaurant in North Toronto. Rock Lobster’s 2012 debut pop up behind To- ronto’s Cosmopolitan Hotel drew hordes. People lined up around the downtown block.
Chef Claudio Aprile, owner of Origin restaurants, calls Pettit a “connector.”
“When you’re with Matt you’re the centre of his attention,” says Aprile, who met Pettit about five years ago through Diageo. “He focuses on you and the topic at hand. He has a positive attitude and that’s what it’s all about.”
Darryl Fine noticed that, too. The long-time restaurateur was looking to change Watusi, his ho-hum restaurant on Ossington Ave., into something different a couple of years ago, but he didn’t know what — until he saw the lines at Pettit’s booth.
“People were excited about the food even before tasting it,” says Fine. “That’s where Matt’s brilliant. He anticipates what people want and gives it to them.”
Within 30 days, Watusi turned into Rock Lobster’s first brick and mortar location and Pettit’s been on a lobster roll ever since.
Within six months, Pettit, Fine and a third partner opened two more Rock Lobster locations, one in the former Shanghai Cowgirl space on Queen St. W., the other in Leslieville. Then Sobeys came knocking. North America’s first ever packaged, fresh lobster roll tested well in a handful of stores. Last month, the grocery chain rolled out Matty’s Seafood products across Ontario, a spokesperson says, including East Coast Chowder and Lobster Bisque.
The Great Lobster Cookbook came about at just the right time and place. Pettit, who still caters events and works them, was slinging his signature lobster rolls at the Toronto Taste awards in 2013 when a literary agent smiled from across the booth, saying he’d long dreamed of a lobster cookbook. Pettit leaves the restaurant and walks to a Pho place across the street. His stomach is rumbling.
Over soup he scrolls through his cellphone. And scratches his beard. He might want to shave it. But he can’t, he says, not until after the east coast book tour. He does look the part of a lobster-loving Maritimer. And brand image is important.
No matter. He’s excited about the weeks to come. Not a moment goes by where there isn’t a possibility of what’s next: taking the packaged lobster roll to the U.S., opening a grab ‘n’ go seafood counter — location T.B.D — and then, who knows?
Just the other week, Pettit says, he spotted a stack of Now magazines still coiled, days after delivery, on the floor of a coffee shop he’s been eyeing as a possible location for “something awesome.” By noon, he says, he was on the phone with a realtor.
“You never know where an opportunity is going to present itself,” he says. “Nike said it best: you just gotta do it.”