John Shon: The Next Generation Leading Philly Lobster, the Beloved Fresh Seafood Destination

John Shon: The Next Generation Leading Philly Lobster, the Beloved Fresh Seafood Destination

What does it take to turn a small seafood stall at a local farmer's market into a thriving community favorite? Join us on the Good Neighbor Podcast as host Bob Blaisse chats with John Shon, the dedicated owner of Philly Lobster Gourmet Foods. John shares the rich history of his family's seafood business, from its humble beginnings as the Philadelphia Lobster and Fish Company, in Narberth, PA, to its transformation into a standalone store fresh seafood destination location now in Wynwood, PA. Discover how Philly Lobster has expanded its offerings far beyond its namesake, with a variety of seafood options that cater to all tastes, including prepared delicacies like grilled teriyaki salmon and sushi crafted daily by an onsite chef.

Embark on an inspiring journey of family legacy and entrepreneurial spirit as John shares insights into working alongside his semi-retired father, whose foundational vision continues to shape Philly Lobster's future. With a commitment to quality and a deep-rooted connection to the local community, Philly Lobster stands out among fresh seafood stores in the Philadelphia Main Line area of Lower Merion Township, Montgomery County, PA. Learn how this second-generation seafood store owner navigates the evolving landscape of his business while honoring his roots, making Philly Lobster a beloved fresh seafood destination for seafood lovers in Philadelphia and its western suburbs in Delaware County and Montgomery County.

Philly Lobster
PhillyLobster.com
facebook.com/phillylobster

333 East Lancaster Avenue
Wynnewood, PA 19096
(610) 642-1082
 
 

--- About The Show--- Good Neighbor Podcast is a spotlight on local businesses in and around Delaware County, PA (“Delco” ) and Beyond...  The executive producer and host, Bob Blaisse, is a community sponsorship advocate, business branding specialist, and publisher of several hometown magazines, including: Newtown Square Friends & Neighbors, Marple Friends & Neighbors and Newtown Edgmont Friends & Neighbors, mailed monthly to more than 12,000 homes in Western Delaware County, PA, and also available for reading online.
 

Transcript

Good Neighbor Podcast Featuring Philly Lobster

Speaker 1 0:00

Hello, delco. This is Michael Barkan, welcoming you to the Good Neighbor Podcast, where fans of local businesses and their neighbors come together. It's my pleasure once again to introduce my friend and neighbor, our host Bob Blasey.

Speaker 2 0:19

Welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast and thank you, michael Barkan, for that introduction. My name is Bob Blasey and I'm the host here of Good Neighbor Podcast Delco. We like to call it Delco and Beyond because, oh, every several episode or so we'll visit and have a visit from a business, a good neighbor business, that might not be in Delaware County, pennsylvania, but just outside and serving the good people of Delaware County, pennsylvania. That's where we're coming from, the southeast corner of Pennsylvania, just north of the state of Delaware and just south of the city of Philadelphia, across the river from New Jersey. The Good Neighbor podcast aims to bring to you businesses in our community, in our area, that serve our area really as good neighbors, because of the way they do business, what they sell and their reputation. Today it's just wonderful that we can bring a very unusual business, something different, a good neighbor business that is known as Philly Lobster Gourmet Foods.

Speaker 2 1:16

Let me bring to the stage the owner of Philly Lobster Gourmet Foods, john Sean. Welcome, john, to the program. Thank you, bob, excited to be here. It's great to have you, john, because the Philly Lobster, as a lot of people call it, philly Lobster Gourmet Foods is a well-known seafood store, not just for lobster. But the great name Philly Lobster really is a wonderful kind of a thought-provoking name, because well, we know that people are not pulling lobsters really out of the Delaware River outside of Philadelphia. They might get some lobsters off the ocean there in New Jersey, which is a couple hours away, but people love lobster and the people of Philadelphia have always loved seafood. Give us a little history of how your company, philly Lobster Gourmet Foods, came about.

Speaker 3 2:05

Sure, I mean it all started with my parents, who acquired the business back in 1998. At the time it was called Philadelphia Lobster and Fish Company. We were a seafood and sushi stall inside of a farmer's market in Narberth at the time. Over the years the farmer's market closed down and we opened up our own brick and mortar store over in Wynwood and we've been there for now close to 20 years in that location and since then I've taken over the business and I decided to rebrand the company to just Philly Lobster a little shorter, a little more modern and youthful. But yeah, that's kind of how the business came about and yeah, we're second generation family business and yeah.

Speaker 2 2:48

Well, let me ask a couple of questions, because people hear lobster and they think, well, that's all they sell. Obviously not from what you've just shared. We'll get onto the lobsters in just a second, but let's give people an idea, because when people like to go to a fresh seafood store, I think they're going to some stores when they cannot get sushi, or they go to a sushi store to get sushi and they don't have the array of different seafoods that you sell. So I'm imagining, because the kind of seafood that I eat might be limited to really the much more known seafoods like tilapia or, or you know, bass, certainly flounder. Maybe once in a while my wife would come home with some grouper or codfish. But aside from those fairly well-known fishes, what, what other fish might we be able to buy at the Philly Lobster location?

Speaker 3 3:39

Yeah, I mean. So salmon is definitely our number one seller. We have a couple of different varieties of salmon that we bring in on a daily basis, but maybe some of the lesser known fish or seafood options that we have. We sell monkfish, we sell skate wing. Black sea bass is a great one. Bronzino has actually gotten very popular over the past couple of years. That comes from the Mediterranean area. The past couple of years that come from the Mediterranean area. I got really nice wild halibut that gets flown in from Alaska, yeah, but we have a whole array of different fish options as well as others. You know shellfish as well. We got I got you know shrimp, scallops, mussels, clams, fresh squid, things like that?

Speaker 2 4:22

Would it all be fresh, uh, seafood, but not prepared? Or I mean, is the sushi that you sell prepared as sushi? And, interestingly enough too, also would you be selling things like fish cakes, you know, crab cakes, and kind of semi-prepared food to take home and warm up?

Speaker 3 4:37

Yeah, yeah, the business originally started as kind of a fresh seafood place, but over the years we've evolved and added some of these other things, so we do a lot of prepared foods. One of our most best selling items is our grilled teriyaki salmon. We sell tons of that every day, but we also sell crab cakes and fish cakes, shrimp salad. We sell also a lot of prepared vegetable dishes and people don't usually think of vegetable and produce dishes as in a seafood store, but we sell a lot of prepared vegetable dishes and people don't usually think of vegetable and produce dishes as in a seafood store, but we sell a lot of sauteed Brussels sprouts. We make an excellent coleslaw things like that, and I have an onsite sushi chef that we make fresh sushi every day, obviously using very fresh, high quality ingredients from the seafood side of the business as well.

Speaker 2 5:22

It's a wide array there. Now you're making my mouth water just listening to it. I know that there are people who are aware of Philly lobster. We in this side of Delaware County we hear about it and it's not that far of a ride just over the border of Delaware County into Montgomery County. You're in Wynwood and people think of Wynwood, pennsylvania also, I think as Ardmore, pennsylvania, lower Merion Township in Montgomery County, and yet really a short drive from Delaware County Whereabouts on Lancaster Avenue is the store, so that our listeners would actually kind of say, oh, that is Philly Lobster, there it is.

Speaker 3 6:02

Right, we're right on Lancaster Avenue. We're in the name of the shopping center. It's called Wynwood West Shopping Center. Some of the other businesses right around us are Nothing but Cakes. We have Tepper Pharmacy, which has been a staple in the community for many, many years, also very close to a Sankey restaurant and the CVS right there in the corner.

Speaker 2 6:20

Sure, I remember that we had our as a guest podcast and nothing but cakes. Owner. Oh yeah, I know the owner. She's a very lovely person and she was a guest on one of our podcast episodes. So we want to send the listeners to Philly lobster, but we also want to kind of maybe get them interested in something that they maybe don't have. Let's talk about lobster for a moment, because obviously it was one of the founding ideas that your father had in starting this business. Are lobsters common or are they so uncommon that they're expensive? Is it an acquired taste? Do people cook them different ways? Give us a little understanding. I would like to have this episode convince some people to go there and say, look, if I'm going to go to Philly Lobster, I'm not just coming home with some fluke flounder, I'm going to buy a lobster. How many people are walking out every day with a live lobster?

Speaker 3 7:14

Right. So lobsters are just one of many items that we sell. I do realize it's in the name of the business, but yeah, I mean our lobsters. They come actually from the cold waters of Canada, so even more north than Maine. So the very nice hard shell lobsters that come from Canada and yeah, we can do them in a couple of different ways, Because I know a lot of people they get. There's maybe some fear about taking home a live lobster and cooking it themselves. So we have customers that like to do it themselves. We have customers that will have us steam them and I'll steam them on site in our commercial steamer and they'll just take it home and eat it themselves. Some people don't even want to deal with the shells and all that and they just want the meat. I'll take out the meat for you. That's wonderful, that's a great service. They want to make some lobster rolls and they don't want to deal with the mess.

Speaker 2 8:12

I'll take out the meat. See, that's what we wanted to get across, because I think that a lot of people are concerned about well, do you have to cook these live in a pot in my own house? I don't want to see that happen. I want to do that, but I love lobster. Now we have awareness that you don't have to take a live lobster home with it snapping around. You can actually have the lobster cooked for you, steamed, at the Philly Lobster Gourmet Foods location in Wynwood, pennsylvania. We're talking to the owner of Philly Lobster, john Sean, who is second generation owner of Philly Lobster and really a successful business that we're aware of, even here in Delaware County, just over the border in Montgomery County. If you'd like to see the list of the many seafood products that Philly Lobster sells, you can visit. Their website is, as the name says, phillylobstercom, or give them a call. Their telephone number for Philly Lobster is 610-642-1082. And I'm sure, john, you're even accessible at times to talk to as the owner of Philly.

Speaker 3 9:13

Lobster right, absolutely, you could just give a call and just ask for John. I'm usually around and the employees will hand the phone over to me directly.

Speaker 2 9:22

Yeah, John, if someone was having an event, if another food store or someone wanted to kind of talk to you. Business to business commercial do you have commercial accounts and do you serve restaurants as well? Business to business commercial Do you?

Speaker 3 9:34

have commercial accounts and do you serve restaurants as well? It's not our primary business, but we do have some smaller restaurants. We also have a lot of private chefs that come to us as well, that serve families in the area. So if they do want to reach out to me directly again, you can either call the phone number or you can email me directly at john at phillylobstercom.

Speaker 2 10:00

Well, that's wonderful. I'd like to just say one more thing and ask about the founders of Philly Lobster your dad, is he still with us, or is he still enjoy watching his son run the company he founded?

Speaker 3 10:06

Yes, he is, and he is actually. He's still involved with the business. He's, I would like to say, semi-retired, because he is, he loves to work, and so he's still helping around but he's shortened his hours and he's starting to play more golf and hang out with his friends.

Speaker 2 10:23

Well, we're very proud of a father who trained his son to be an entrepreneur, set his son on a path of entrepreneurship in a business that he founded, because it's a great business and it's one that everybody is kind of becoming more and more aware of. There's a lot of seafood stores out there and people have their favorites, but if you're looking for a seafood store or if you think that maybe there is the likelihood that this could become a new favorite, it's not far away in Wynwood, pennsylvania, just over the border of Delaware County, really, ardmore, lower Marion Township. You know where that is? On Lancaster Avenue, 333 East Lancaster Avenue. It's Philly Lobster and the owner here, the guest owner of Philly Lobster, john Sean. I want to say, john, thank you for being a second generation owner and taking Philly Lobster to the next level for the good people of our community and really thank you for being a great business in our community, a good neighbor business. I want to thank you very much for being a guest on the Good Neighbor Podcast today.

Speaker 3 11:19

Thank you, bob, it's been a pleasure.

Speaker 1 11:21

Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast hosted by Bob Lacey. This is Michael Barkan inviting everyone to get on the Good Neighbor team. Nominate your favorite local business to be featured on an upcoming episode by going to gnpdelcocom or by calling bob at 610-557-3745.