Sakonnet Lobster found a way to deal with COVID restrictions: Door-to-door delivery

LITTLE COMPTON — Not only was COVID-19 keeping people indoors, it was one more reason to keep Rhode Islanders from traveling far for just about anything, even lobster.

Doug Mataronas saw what restaurants were doing during the initial weeks of the governor’s orders to stay at home, so he figured he’d give it a try.

He started delivering fresh lobsters to the doors of customers in Little Compton and Tiverton, and then went as far as Boyd’s Lane in Portsmouth — all the way over the Sakonnet River Bridge — where customers who placed orders online or by phone would meet him at the Park and Ride.

When he first posted his delivery plans on Facebook in late March he got “a huge response,” he said. People liked that he’d deliver to their homes “because we’re way down here,” he said of people having to travel very far by Rhode Island standards to get to the store.

Sakonnet Lobster is about 10 miles from the Tiverton town line on Main Road in the south end of town. For some Rhode Islanders that’s soooooooooooooo far that the only thing that might get them to travel that distance is a need to get out of the house and go for a long, long drive.

Mataronas thought the deliveries would only last for a short time while restaurants were closed, but he continues to get orders from people for his Saturday deliveries, though the retail delivery orders have slowed a bit since restaurants have started to open up to outdoor dining.

Mataronas grew up in the lobstering business. He had his first skiff at the age of 11 that he used to carry lobster traps out to the open waters and transport lobsters he caught to the shore. The store his family owns at Sakonnet Point in Little Compton, and the boats they operate out of in Tiverton, along with independent fishermen whose catch they buy, help supply local residents, restaurants and wholesalers with a steady supply of freshly caught lobsters, some so big that they could be considered record breakers.

“The biggest was 20 pounds, from my dad,” said Mataronas of his father Jim who caught the lobster that was estimated to have been about 100 years old.

Jim built the company’s building near Sakonnet Point in 1971. It replaced the truck he used to sell lobsters out of. He has two boats that dock in Tiverton behind Coastal Roasters, close to Grinnells Beach. One is called Sakonnet Lobster II, an offshore boat that travels 90 to 100 miles and is named after the first boat that sank in 2014, and Sunny Jim, an inshore boat used for a day’s lobstering that’s named after a patriarch of the family. His brother Greg, who fishes for monk fish and lobsters, and brother Matt are also involved in the business.

Lobster traps and bait barrels are stacked on the property around the store near Sakonnet Point. A chair near the entrance to the store is made out of lobster traps.

Inside the store are tanks filled with circulated salt water that is brought in from the harbor across the street. Mataronas said his father actually hired a policeman in 1971 to control what traffic there was when they laid the pipe across the road to bring the water from the harbor to the store.

The tanks can hold as many as 6,000 lobsters, he said, though they’ve never had that many at any one time.

They did have some memorable ones, including a “half and half” lobster that had two different shades of shell down its back; a spotted lobster; a blue lobster; and a current resident weighing over 5 pounds.

It’s a male lobster, Mataronas says of the big-clawed thin-tailed lobster that has a few barnicles on it. Male lobsters have bigger claws “like a body builder,” he said, while female lobsters have wider tales and smaller claws.

An order he just got for delivery was for six lobsters, all female,weighing 3 to 4 pounds each.

A few days ago a customer ordered the biggest he had in stock, a 5.8 pounder, with a 2 pound companion.

Mataronas plans to get closer to his customer base by selling at the Tiverton Farmers Market on Tuesdays at Sandywoods. The market started two weeks ago. It runs from 2 p.m. to 6 pm.