When I was a small kid, my mom taught me how to cook and I loved it because it allowed me to be creative, fun and express myself. Now in my restaurants, it is my responsibility as the chef and owner to entertain, prepare and present delicious seafood dishes on a daily basis.
In the fall of 2013, I had the lucky opportunity to create a seafood brand line for Sobeys Grocers Ontario. There are a lot of seafood items in every single grocery store today, and most are owned by large global companies, so I knew I had to do something new, different, fresh and approachable. I knew what I wanted to do, I had my company name ready to go and I knew which items I wanted to present, but the reality set in and I realized that I had no idea how and where to start the process. I remember wondering how on earth I would teach myself the seafood retail game in less than two months. My retail partner needed product on their shelves for Jan 1st 2014. CRAZY!
I started the process by doing what I thought any young savvy business person would do: I ran to the nearest grocery store and began looking at the back of every single product in the stores to see who made what, and who co-packed this, and so on. The truth is that unless you have $10 million dollars, it’s super hard to have your own manufacturing facility to produce your own goods. So you need to search out who can help co-pack and produce product for you, and that’s exactly what I did. After researching for weeks and cold-calling manufacturing plants and having countless doors shut on me, I was able to find two amazing gentlemen who each owned large, federally-inspected co-packing facility. After several meetings and sales pitches to these amazing guys, they finally agreed to take a chance on me!
So steps 1 and 2 - develop the brand and find manufacturers were complete and I felt on top of the world, but it was time for the hardest challenge yet: to make and spec the actual products to appeal to thousands of people across Canada.
After a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, I proudly launched Matty’s Seafood Brands on January 1st, 2014, in 12 Sobeys Urban Fresh stores in Toronto. I was so excited to create a delicious East Coast Lobster Chowder, and the world’s first pre-packaged fresh Lobster Roll, which was an obvious choice as that’s what were best known for in our award winning Rock Lobster restaurants. We asked a lot of questions, and I am sure people thought we were crazy but the underlying point was that everyone was there to help support us along the way!
In less than a year we had grown to 4 skus, which included the chowder, lobster roll, seafood seasoning, and an amazing lobster bisque. We went from 12 stores of distribution to approximately 275 stores in Ontario. And as of today,our products are currently available in over 1,000 stores all across Canada and the United States, with a total of six Matty’s Seafood dishes!
Our Matty’s Seafood Brands (MSB) Products
Matty’s Seafood Lobster Roll
MSB Seafood Seasoning
MSB Lobster Chowder
MSB Lobster Bisque
MSB Lobster Mac & Cheese (Frozen)
MSB & McClure’s All Natural Craft Caesar Mix
It's been a long and wild road to get things going, but Matty's Seafood Brands began with the simple idea of bringing affordable, high-quality seafood dishes to homes across North America. The dream lives on and continues with every bowl of chowder, every bite of lobster roll, and every scoop of lobster mac & cheese families share together!
- Matty
