The Sault’s Jamie Rogers has taken a big step from not only being a seafood lover but also a seafood vendor.
“My spouse is from Prince Edward Island and I've always loved visiting his family and friends in the Maritimes. His parents would quite often get us a few lobsters and we would have quite a meal.
"We went to the markets on the wharf there. His friends back home are fishermen so we've been on the boats and caught mackerel. We've always had such a great experience around seafood on the East Coast,” Rogers told SooToday.
Those experiences inspired her to establish Saltspire Seafood back home in the Sault.
Locals can order frozen East Coast seafood from Rogers through Saltspire Seafood, an online business. From there, she delivers orders to customers at their homes every Wednesday.
Saltspire Seafood offers frozen packages of lobster meat, scallops, a chowder mix that contains haddock, salmon, scallops and shrimp, crab meat and packets containing four fillets of haddock.
“Currently I’m getting my items from Fisherman’s Market in Halifax and I keep tabs on items from P.E.I., but it’s 100-per-cent Canadian,” Rogers said.
Saltspire Seafood opened in early June and Rogers said business has been very good so far.
“I want to jump up and down about how well received it's been by other entrepreneurs in the Sault. The Breakfast Pig picked up some of our product and offered it on their menu. I sprinted over there to try it because I knew it would be delicious,” Rogers said, adding that items like lobster, scallops and chowder mix are ideal items for customers to have in their freezers.
Being a food vendor is a career change for Rogers, who studied advertising at Sudbury’s Cambrian College before working in the offices of Sault College and Algoma University student unions.
“If somebody told me 10 years ago that I’d be in the food industry, I wouldn’t have believed them. I knew I always wanted to run my own business but I never knew what kind of business until now.
"I get a lot of joy dropping off these seafood orders at people's houses knowing they’re going to love it as much as I do,” Rogers said.
She said that being an entrepreneur sets an example for her children as well.
“I wanted to show my kids you can run something for yourself and my eldest child sees that. Being able to do this and be at home with my kids is something I love.”
Rogers said she also plans to take her frozen seafood on the road and do pop-ups in smaller communities such as Wawa.
Local seafood lovers can check out the Saltspire Seafood website or contact Rogers by email.
