Real Videos  · 103 Water Street
· Hallowell · Maine · 04347 · Tel 621-4114 · 877-621-4114 · Fax 621-2622 My wife and I were in the other day to pick up two bowls of stew. We are both Maine natives who have had many many bowls of Maine lobster stew. Yours is the best we have ever had! We will be in again soon. Thank you very much for completing the order and the quality of your product. My mother could not even describe in words how good the stew was, and she is a seasoned New England seafood lover! I will be sure to pass on the good reputation that was passed to me about Hattie's. Have a prosperous New Year and take care! Good morning, I wanted to let you know we received our order just fine from FedEx and it was delicious! Everyone really enjoyed it on Christmas Eve. The flavor was so good and I was pleased at the amount of lobster in it. I will order again. Hi Hattie, My parents loved the stew! Thank you for the excellent service!! We just received a Quart of your Hattie's Lobster Stew today. You may as well omit the container label caveat to "refrigerate any unused portion"!!! There was NONE! It was absolutely delicious! Hattie, Michael and everyone else, We served the lobster stew at our very expensive dinner last Thursday night in landlocked Iowa. Everyone raved about it. Thanks for helping to make the evening a success. Happy Holidays David and Bonita Montz Web Design by chezmichel 1999 - 2003 |
Hattie's Lobster Stew Sales Hot With Web Page PromotionHaving spent more than the previous 16 years running the Weathervane restaurant in Readfield, they had a pretty good idea about how to make lobster stew but they tested their new product on friends and neighbors at a backyard barbecue. It was trial by fire for their recipe."We invited about 25 people... and served lobster stew," Harriett Schmidt recalled. "We had people from all walks of life. We had a diversity of people." There was only one person in Maine who was selling lobster stew and the Schmidts wanted to be sure theirs was the better of the two stews. So they bought some of the competitor's lobster stew and they whipped up a batch of their own. They served everyone two cups of stew, each a different stew in marked but not labeled cups. They asked people to vote on the better of the stews. 
The votes were conclusive, they said in a recent interview at their Hallowell
restaurant and base of operations, Hattie's Chowder House at 103 Water
St."Twenty five out of 25 voted for our lobster stew," she said. "People asked
us `What were you going to do if people voted for hers,' and we said, well, we
were going back to the drawing board."
It wasn't necessary. That was in July of 1999. They started making their lobster stew in the kitchens at Hilltop Family Restaurant in Augusta, which is owned by Harriett Schmidt's brother Ron McNaughton, and they started promoting their new product. It was like being back in the restaurant business again, except without the long hours, Schmidt said.Word spread of Hattie's lobster stew. The West Gardiner couple ran an ad in Downeast Magazine and started mailing the stew throughout the country. The business has grown ever since, and the Schmidts, along with partner Mike Adam of Burnham, who cooked for them at the Weathervane for a total of about 10 years, now mail out almost half of the lobster stew they make.Adam, who is proficient with web site design, built a web page for the new business (www.hattieslobsterstew.com) and sales have picked up even more. Schmidt said the business is at the point now where they are better than breaking even, and between the mail order and Internet stew sales and the Hallowell restaurant, they are confident their new career choice was a good one.Though they will share the ingredients of Hattie's lobster stew -lobster meat, butter, milk. sherry, salt and pepper- they won't discuss the proportions. Now, with the holidays upon them, orders are coming in for lobster stew for Christmas treats and even Christmas presents, they said."Are we going to be shipping 100 units (a quart- or a pint-sized container of stew) a day? Probably. It wouldn't surprise me," Schmidt said.The next step in growing the business, she said, is to develop an international sales effort and to add more of their other chowders to their mail-order menu, all of which can be sampled at Hattie's Chowder House in Hallowell. The Schmidts also sell their lobster stew through Ballards market in Manchester.Now, having connected productively with the Internet and all that it offers their business, Schmidt said she and her husband and Adam, "are working a lot less and enjoying it a lot more, which was our ultimate goal when we got out of the restaurant business."Hattie's serves both sit-down customers and take out patrons, and also offers a traditional sandwich and fried food menu, which, not surprisingly, is heavy on the seafood. Hattie's can be reached at 621-4114. Homemade |
