Pine Point co-op, restaurant buy 'perfect fit' for business owners - Mainebiz

The owners of Bayley's Lobster Pound and two other restaurants in Pine Point, a coastal neighborhood of Scarborough, have bought a fishermen's buying station and a connected restaurant.

Susan Bayley Clough and Vincent Clough bought the Pine Point Fisherman's Co-op and Rising Tide restaurant, at 96 King St., from Gary Johnson and Tim Staples, in a deal that closed in April. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The Cloughs own Bayley's Lobster Pound fish market and a connected restaurant, the Bait Shed, as well as Garage BBQ, which is connected to the Dog Days of Pine Point gift shop. The operations are within half a mile of each other.

Pine Point Fisherman's Co-op and the restaurant, which they've renamed Stern Seafood Restaurant, are within a couple of blocks of Bayley's Lobster Pound/Bait Shed.

The Clough family has owned and operated Bayley's Lobster Pound since 1915.

Photo / Peter Van Allen

Scarborough town officials were concerned that new owners of 96 King St. would maintain it as part of the working waterfront.

Coal to clams

"I'm the fourth generation in the family business," said Susan Bayley Clough.

The pound started with her great-grandfather, Stephen E. Bayley, who came to Scarborough from Wells.

"His father owned a coal business in Wells," said Clough. "He decided to break with family tradition and come here."

At the time, clams were a more important resource than lobsters, so he focused on clams, she said.

Tourism eventually spread into Pine Point from nearby resort areas like Old Orchard Beach, which is a few miles south of Pine Point down Route 9. Lobsters became a bigger item to fish for, so Bayley grew his business to sell both lobsters and clams, retail and wholesale.

Clough's grandfather took over the business, followed by her father in the 1960s.

"My father did a lot of expansion during his time," she said. "He started shipping to Japan in the 1980s, and he added a modern tank room and expanded the building."

When stricter international shipping regulations were put in place after 9/11, the company began to focus on domestic markets.

The family opened garage BBQ three years ago. 

Earlier this year, the Cloughs approached Johnson and Staples about buying the co-op and restaurant. 

"It's a perfect fit," she said. "It's not far from us, so it made a lot of sense for us to become involved."

Members of the town's Shellfish Conservation Commission and Coastal Waters and Harbor Advisory Committee at a Scarborough Town Council workshop in January were concerned about whether the Cloughs would maintain the property as part of the working waterfront.

Expand the clam market

"I think we were the right people to pick up the baton, because we have been part of the working waterfront," said Clough. "We're a known quantity to the town and to the fishermen."

Clough said one goal for the wharf is to expand the clam market.

"They weren't using that as a clam-buying station," she said. "We're trying to increase that. Clams are still a big resource in Scarborough. So we're trying to expand our value to the working waterfront. We have two or three diggers starting to come in to sell to us."

The co-op was established in 1976, according to its website. Clough said, however, it's been a privately owned concern, rather than a fishermen's cooperative, for several decades.

The Cloughs are undertaking some renovation, mostly cosmetic, at the restaurant, including new paint and tile work and an updated menu.

"The building is very well set up," she said. 

Because the family owns several restaurants in close proximity, the goal is to make the menus of each as distinctive as possible, she said.

The fish-buying station will remain as is for the first year, although her husband is installing a hoist for the bait cooler, she said.

"We weren't buying from most of these fishermen before, so we're meeting with them individually to see what they'd like from us," she said.

Initial rehab will likely be $200,000, she said.

Pine Point has a number of other restaurants and tourist amenities. It can be quite busy in the summer, Clough said.

At the town-owned pier at the end of the point, "a lot of traffic come through, with recreational fishermen and commercial fishermen and clam diggers and people walking the beach," she said. "Pine Point is an awesome community." 

Being more off the beaten track, she said, more tourists come for week-long rather than overnight visits. Many summer families have been there for generations.

"I might wait on the grandchildren of the grandparents that my grandmother waited on," she said. "People talk about tourists from away. But my neighbors' families have been coming here for generations, so they don't feel like tourists. It's really a village feel."