Jesse Rose in his Chatham shop with one granddaddy of a sea clam.
By Doreen Leggett
Last year on July 4, Captain Jesse Rose stopped at PJs Family Restaurant on Route 6 in Wellfleet, where he worked as a teenager.
“He gave us some minced clams for our chowder,” said owner Brian Reeves, who has known Rose for decades. “We were having such a hard time finding good product, we tasted it and were like, ‘Woah, that’s legit!’
“We dumped everything else,” Reeves said with a laugh. “His clams are way more tender, and definitely sweeter.”
Rose has been fishing most of his life. His foray into processing sea clams is a recent business move that fits into his work connecting people to Cape seafood.
“These are sustainable Cape Cod clams caught on the backside of the Cape, and taste wonderful,” said Rose, adding clams harvested that morning can be in a chowder bowl by evening.
Rose, a fourth generation Wellfleetian who moved to Chatham when he was 20, stood in his workspace in Commerce Park in Chatham on a recent sunny, humid day.
“What happens in here on a daily basis? A lot,” Rose said.
Scallops, mussels, sea clams, oysters and some finfish come in and out of the processing facility. Rose, a 1994 Nauset High graduate, bought Chatham Light Mussels from Domenic Santoro in 2023; Rose bought his first boat, which became the Midnight Our, from Santoro close to 20 years ago.
“I’ve bought what he had and did totally different things with them,” said Rose with a smile.
The Midnight Our became a scallop boat. Rose still handles mussels at his plant, but his focus is sea clams.
Three men and a woman, knives in hand, clad in foul weather bibs and t-shirts, were making short work of shucking sea clams into barrels filled with ice water.
Off that large room is a double-wide door to an outdoor freezer and a smaller room with new machinery, which looks like a horizontal Cuisinart, to cut clams. Straight ahead is another freezer filled with bags and containers with the ‘From Our Boats, to Your Table’ logo. Upstairs is Rose’s office.
“When we have five or six guys shucking, they start at 6 a.m. and can do 120 bushels in five hours, which is almost 3000 pounds of meat,” he said. He might spend $4500 on just the bags to pack them in.
With employees at the plant, truck drivers, a direct sales contingent, and a captain and crew on each of three boats, he has 25 people on the payroll.
“Three years ago, I had two people,” he said.
He had the Midnight Our then, named for his wife Abby’s family. Although she works at her grandfather’s business, Robert B. Our Company, she spends a lot of time making sure the fish business runs smoothly. Rose calls her the boss.
Rose’s dad and great grandfather were fishermen (his granddad owned a construction company and built hundreds of houses in Wellfleet and Truro) and one of Rose’s early memories is being on a boat when he was 6. When he was older, he started fishing for notable Chatham characters, Ricky Abreau, Lee Tomlin, Mike Russo and John Tuttle.
Tuttle, captain of the F/V Cuda, remembers that in the early 2000s, he and Rose had some big trips longlining for haddock before they switched to gillnetting.
“We caught quite a bit of fish together,” said Tuttle. “We had a great time. He is just one of those guys who is a natural fisherman.”
One time Rose was standing at the back of the boat and saw a tuna so he grabbed a harpoon and stuck him, which led to a battle Rose won.
“That doesn’t happen every day,” Tuttle said laughing.
After crewing for several years, he ended up running a scalloper for Chris Our, Abby’s uncle (how they met). When he was 30, he bought his own boat.
Midnight Our was a clam boat and scalloper. The clam permit came with scallop but sat unused for about 18 years.
“We have always scalloped year-round,” Rose said.
Rose changed his business plan when COVID struck. He was one of the first to lobby the state for a permit to allow direct sales off the boat, at the dock. The Midnight Our built a loyal following selling at Farmers Markets as well.
As scallop quota dropped, Rose opted to diversify.
“He is always thinking ahead,” said Tuttle. “He and his wife have a good head for business.”
Rose bought the Nemesis in 2020, which like Midnight Our can go scalloping or clamming.
“I’m a fisherman,” he said. “I’ll fish for what’s available, as long as there is lots of it.”
The Midnight Our’s home port is Wychmere in Harwich, the Nemesis lands in Hyannis and Provincetown, depending on their choice of fishing grounds.
The captain of the Nemesis, Michael Van Hoose, 26, was with Rose on one of the hottest days of the summer. They spent about a day and half re-rigging the Nemesis so she could spend the next few weeks scalloping on Georges Bank – about 240 miles away.
Van Hoose was looking forward to the trip (he looks forward to fishing in general) but it’s much farther offshore than where they fish for clams. They have been fishing around Billingsgate Shoal and getting their 200-bushel limit daily.
“Basically, what comes up is pure clams,” said Rose.
They can have an audience in Provincetown when the crane at the pier picks up big bundles of clams from the photogenic Nemesis. The attention is ok with Van Hoose who wants people to understand where their seafood is coming from.
Van Hoose likes that the clams are caught locally, shucked locally, processed and sold locally. That beats the usual route of being processed off-Cape and sent back over the bridge.
“This is how it should be,” he said.
He also appreciates how Rose invests in the company, always exploring different avenues of success.
“This is the best business I have worked for,” he said. “There is so much support it’s crazy. He knows exactly what he is doing.”
Rose made upgrades to the processing plant, and he made sure people knew about local availability. He has made a guest appearance at Nauset High School to highlight local sea clams with culinary students and Cape Cod Tech regularly buys his clams for its culinary program.
With all the seafood coming in and out of the building, Rose finds himself on shore full-time these days. He delivers to a few restaurant clients, who he knows personally.
“We are focused on people who sell their own chowder,” he said. “Most people who deal with my scallops instantly buy my clams.”
A good portion of the processed clams also travel with his scallops to various Farmers Markets up and down the Cape and beyond.
“I pulled into Barnstable the other day and there were 60 people waiting for me,” Rose said. “People put chopped clams over pasta. It’s delicious.”
Rose donates and sells to the Family Table Collaborative in Yarmouth. Earlier this year he began shipping minced clams to Lowell to be made into clam chowder at Plenus, a company that specializes in good chowders.
That chowder is now the third in the Small Boats, Big Taste trilogy, started by the Fishermen’s Alliance during COVID to give fishermen a fair and stable price for their fish and provide nutritious and delicious meals to the growing number of people facing food insecurity. The clam chowder along with haddock chowder and Provencal fish stew (with skate) is distributed at food banks across the Commonwealth.
“The elders of the Wampanoag tribe requested more,” he said. “It’s great to feed your community.”
With one tractor trailer and three box trucks, a lot of product is moving. About a quarter is alive and will go to the Boston area or New York. Rose also sends some clams to the famous Fulton Market in New York but more goes to Red’s Best, which has facilities at the Chatham and Boston Fish Piers and in New Bedford.
Almost all of the clam is used, some becoming clam strips, all delicious, said Rose. The guts he sells as bait for conch and sea bass fishermen.
Shells go to Abby’s family’s company for driveways.
Rose delivers the chopped clams to the restaurants himself.
Reeves, of Pjs, said he’ll text Rose an order, sometimes late, he said a bit sheepishly. But Rose is always saying it’s no problem, he was getting some work done anyway.
“Jesse and his wife – they hustle,” he said. “They are working seven days a week.”
That day Rose had some deliveries to make (including live animals for the sushi market) and he had to meet a mechanic at the Nemesis in Hyannis.
His captains and crews had the day off.
“I told them to relax. Clamming is hard,” Rose said.
Rose likes the idea of processing what he catches on Cape and selling it on Cape.
“This is old school,” he said of his operation. “They told me I couldn’t do it. There are no other shucker packers on Cape Cod.”
When he isn’t on the road, Rose spends a lot of house time upstairs; always paperwork and calls to be made. But he is usually running seafood to customers. Both Rose’s children, Shorey and Stella, help out with the business.
On the wall in his office are various charts and maps, pictures of his children and a boat called the Barbara O, named after his mother-in-law.
A few months ago, the third Barbara O was christened and Rose will get back to what he loves, fishing. He hopes to catch and sell tuna and swordfish.
“My fun,” he said.