by David Grant
So how is it that a former concrete mason from North Dakota would become one of the largest stone-crab purveyors in the world? Jeff Haugland doesn’t really have an answer, besides “dumb luck and a belief that if you work hard enough good things will happen.” It’s the hard work part that’s the most likely reason.
Haugland and his wife, Denise, head up the Island Crab Company, a seafood distribution facility located on Pine Island. They take the fresh seafood caught by as many as forty independent Gulf of Mexico fishermen and deliver it to dozens of restaurants and wholesale operations throughout Southwest Florida.
The most prized of the seafood—the Florida stone crab—is a local delicacy that is one of the world’s only renewable protein resources. Stone crabs are caught and their claws are harvested. Then they’re returned to the sea to regrow the claws to their original size within a year, just in time to be caught again.
“There’s tens of thousands of stone-crab traps all along this side of the Gulf,” says Haugland. “It’s the livelihood for a lot of local fishermen, and it’s something that you can only find on the Gulf side of the state.”
It’s this sweet claw meat that has turned Haugland’s business venture into a full-blown local success story. As many as three hundred thousand pounds of stone crabs are distributed annually by Haugland’s team, along with thousands of pounds of blue crab, grouper, Charlotte Bay clams, mullet, and much more.
“We’ve found some interesting distribution opportunities over the course of time,” says Haugland. “Japan wants us to export all of the mullet we can get, because they consider the roe a delicacy. It’s something we would never consider here, but there the eggs are like gold.”
Shipping fish eggs to Japan and other points east was the furthest thing from Haugland’s mind in 1985, when he returned to North Dakota from a visit to Fort Myers. “My father-in-law was blue crabbing in the Caloosahatchee River, and I went out with him a couple times and literally fell in love,” says Haugland. “I spent the rest of that cold winter wondering if I could make a living as a blue crabber. One day, I just walked in and told Denise that I was going to try. We packed up everything and headed south.”
Haugland exchanged the physically demanding, hardscrabble life of a concrete pourer for one equally as difficult. A blue crabber, like all fishermen, leads a difficult life, a life of hard labor and constant effort with rewards left to the whims of the sea and the weather.
Each fisherman is an independent operator. They decide what to fish for and where to fish for it. Their keep is determined by what they catch. It’s an unsung vocation that deserves more appreciation than it gets.
Haugland fished for blue crab for three years before making the decision to try to become a distributor. He leased one bay in an industrial complex in the middle of Pine Island, far from the water, and began working connections with the area’s fishermen.
“Most fishermen have their boats tied up on a canal behind their house or they trailer it, so it wasn’t important to set up shop near the water,” says Haugland. “When they’re done fishing, they just load up their truck and drive it over to unload.”
Now, nearly twenty years later, Island Crab encompasses six bays filled with ice machines, coolers, freezers, and all kinds of distribution machinery. It is one of the largest distributors of stone-crab claws on the coast. A fleet of five trucks runs every day of the year delivering the fresh seafood from Naples to the Florida Panhandle.
A large percentage of those deliveries are to the Pinchers Crab Shack restaurants that have become so iconic in Southwest Florida. “I remember when Tony [Phelan, Pinchers’ founder] was just starting out, and he would drive up from Bonita to pick up five or ten pounds of crab to try to sell that night,” says Haugland. “Now we deliver hundreds of thousands of pounds of crab and fresh fish to his doorstep every day.”
The Pinchers connection led to a true growth spurt for Haugland’s company. Pinchers rapidly growing needs opened up opportunities to diversify that most small distributors never consider. “We set up a picking room where a team of twelve to fifteen employees takes whole blue crabs and turns them into crab cakes, cocktail claws, and lump crab by hand,” says Haugland. Those items are boxed and delivered daily, along with the rest of the fresh seafood, and have become a central part of the Pinchers menu.
In 2007, Phelan Holdings, which owns the Pinchers group, bought a share of the Island Crab Company. “Jeff’s company and the fishermen who work with them are essential to our success,” says Grant Phelan, co-owner of Phelan Holdings. “The standard that Pinchers operates by is ‘You Can’t Fake Fresh,’ and becoming partners with them ensures that.”
“We’re very proud to be a part of the Pinchers team,” says Haugland. “All of us: the fishermen, the staff, the drivers, everybody. The Gulf of Mexico produces some of the finest seafood in the world, and our responsibility is to show that to every customer who visits a Pinchers or one of the other restaurants or wholesalers who rely on us.”
Twenty-three years ago, Jeff and Denise Haugland decided to build a life from the sea. It looks like hard work and a little “dumb luck” have paid off.
To learn more about the Island Crab Company, visit islandcrabcompany.com. For readers outside of Southwest Florida, Island Crab Company ships blue and stone crabs in season throughout North America.