Winter may be soup season, but at Look’s Gourmet Food Company in Whiting, chowders and bisques are cooking year-round. This small business way up the coast near the Canadian border is now recognized as the fastest growing seafood soup manufacturing company in the country. More than soup, Look’s also processes and cans Maine lobster and other seafood meats, four seafood sauces, two varieties of beans, clam juice and Look’s is the only facility in the country to can Indian pudding.
Today their products, mostly under the Bar Harbor label, are distributed in over 30 percent of the nation’s supermarkets and in several foreign countries.
When Mike Cote and his partner Cynthia Fisher took over the business from the Look family in 2003, they continued with many of the old recipes that they redeveloped using all natural ingredients to meet new natural food standards. Some products feature sustainable species as determined by the Marine Stewardship Council, including west coast salmon and Alaskan pollock.
Cote came to this company with over 25 years experience in marketing and management within the food industry. He was senior vice president of sales and operations at Odwalla/Fresh Samantha when it was sold to Coca Cola in 2001. Although he stayed on for a while, he soon realized that he wanted to channel his skills and energy into his own business. “I wanted to begin creating opportunities for myself,” said Cote of his decision to move on.
At the time of the sale, A.M. Look Canning Company, founded in 1917, had just six employees producing a narrow range of products that were distributed primarily under its Atlantic label. One of their other assets was the Bar Harbor trademark acquired by the company in 1946 to be used for a limited niche in the tourist trade.
“It jumped right off the page,” said Stephen Vlachois, a business broker in Portland who managed the acquisition. “When Mike realized that he could have the Bar Harbor name he knew he had something, and he was right,” said Vlachois. He went on to explain “the name gave Cote two things; immediate name recognition across the country and around the world as well as a chance to reinvent the company.”
“Mike is an extremely smart marketer; nobody works harder,” said Vlachois. Cote was named Maine Small Business Administration (SBA) Person of the year 2012.
Sitting at her computer redesigning labels for their Canadian market (it must be bilingual), Cynthia Fisher may be the one other person who works as hard to make the company the success that it is. She is vice president of marketing and quality assurance. Walking on the floor with her on a day that lobster bisque is being made, one immediately sees an environment of mutual respect and strong work ethic. “We all understand the mission of quality. The workers are mandated to stop the line if they see a problem,” says Fisher of the 20-plus employees that work four 10-hour days each week.
Robin Haschalk, her husband, Michael and son, Steve all work at Look’s. Haschalk and her husband had worked for 25 years in nearby Lubec at its last sardine cannery until it closed in 2001. Although they were both given retraining as heavy equipment operators, they ended up moving to Florida where they worked in a specialty food plant.
Today they are happy to be back in Maine with family and working in the area. “Having a full year-round job is really good,” says Haschalk, who is a retort (pressure cooker) operator. “Since we have been here (seven years) output has tripled,” she said.
Food produced and canned for the company can be wrapped with any one of a number of different label options depending on the distributor and final destination. In stores, locally, you may find the same product labeled as Look’s Atlantic or Bar Harbor. The company also produces for a number of private labels.
It is the Bar Harbor label that has the most buzz and the one that Cote and Fisher carry the furthest in their journeys worldwide. “We sell Maine everywhere we go,” says Fisher of their brand and their state.
Hannaford, one of their distributors headquartered in Scarborough, Maine, is preparing a feature spread recognizing the company’s Bar Harbor brand for their late fall “Close to Home” brochure. It will be distributed throughout New England and New York. “Bar Harbor is one of five companies that we are representing” said Connie Clifford, marketing director at Hannaford who added “They are truly representative of a local business with a product that we are proud to sell.”
Coverage of Washington County is made possible by a grand from the Eaton Foundation.
Leslie Bowman is a freelance writer and photographer living in Trescott.