Chester River Seafood
There’s a recipe for a perfect Saturday evening on the Eastern Shore in the summertime. A six pack of ice-cold beers, some old newspapers, a picnic table, and a bushel of fat river crabs to share with friends. In Delmarva’s waterfront destinations or cities, this ritual is one best enjoyed at crab houses like the Crab Claw, Harris’ Seafood or Higgins. But on the rural Eastern Shore where you host your crab feasts at home, inevitably, your crabs are sourced from your Guy.
Everybody has a Guy. Normally, your Guy runs a crab establishment outside of town limits. Often it’s out of a pole barn or an outbuilding, to avoid pricey retail rent. You call your Guy, place your order of a few dozen. Specify the spice you want (light, medium, or heavy), and drive—often to what feels like the middle of nowhere—to claim your prize.
My Guy is Chris Lingerman, the owner and operator of Chester River Seafood. It’s a family business, and Lingerman’s wife Sheila runs the retail operation while Chris manages the wholesale side, mostly blue crab, oyster and fish sales. Operating out of a business in Kent County’s Piney Neck, sandwiched between Greys Inn Creek and Langford Creek, it’s close to the watermen that sell their fresh catch to Chester River Seafood. For everyone else, the trek to remote Piney Neck for crabs is a pilgrimage, a welcomed rite of summer.
The way Lingerman tells it, catching crabs and working on the water has been a part of his life since he was little. As a boy growing up in Tolchester, Maryland, just north of Rock Hall, he always had a few crab pots he’d bait and set in the summertime just for fun. As a teenager (to keep him out of trouble) his mother got him a summer job with a local waterman, Billy Collier. Lingerman turned his hand to whatever Collier needed—cut bait apart, cull crabs—from 4 AM until 4:30 PM, seven days a week. It was hard work but it suited Lingerman. Looking at him, you can see why. He’s tall and built like an old-school brawler, with wide shoulders and big hands that seem perfectly adapted to the hard labor of water work.
After high school, Lingerman went into clam dredging and later, oyster diving—which he particularly liked. The money was good, and little by little, he started selling some of his catch directly to retailers, rather than sending it to a wholesaler. A friend on the Western Shore in the retail seafood business began buying from Lingerman—10 bushels of number one crabs swelled to 40 to 50 bushels a day. At the same time, Lingerman took a shine to a local woman, recently divorced, who also had an interest in the seafood business. When their friendship grew into more around 2006, he invited Sheila to try selling seafood as a retail business out of a new pole building on his property. “I told her, just do what you can with it. She wasn’t too sure, but by the next day, I was down here pounding nails,” Lingerman said. With the help of some friends, they improved the building’s electricity and brightened up the walls with some paint. Like that, Chester River Seafood was born.
The business opened on Father’s Day, 2007, with just two watermen selling their crabs to business and Lingerman’s one Western Shore account buying what they brought in. It was a slow start. “I think we had six customers on our first day,” Lingerman said, “But nobody knew we were here and we are kind of out of the way.” But the business grew, little by little each year, and the Lingermans were careful to invest back in the business—one year, a walk-in cooler, another year, shedding tanks for a soft crab operation or expanding into fish and oysters. Eventually, they had 20 different watermen selling to them—not just crabs, but their entire catch—crabs, oysters, and fish.
Today, Chester River Seafood has two refrigerated trucks that transport fresh Chesapeake seafood to all the major metropolitan areas: Philadelphia, New York, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and Crisfield, MD. Lingerman reserves part of their wholesale fish, crabs and oysters for Sheila Lingerman’s retail business. In addition to steamed crabs, steamed shrimp, fresh soft shells, crabmeat, oysters (in the shell or shucked), and fileted fish, Sheila offers a selection of homemade specialties— crab cakes, side salads, and desserts. It’s possible to walk in empty handed and walk out with everything needed for a meal that would make H.L. Mencken weep with joy.
The Lingermans have a couple of golden rules they use to operate their business. Excellent customer service: “I want people to walk in the door and we greet them, know their name,” Chris Lingerman said. The other is cleanliness. “You want that place to be spic and span, look clean, smell clean. The first impression is important.” And if you can, be generous. “If crabs are running good this week, or maybe there’s a few light ones laying around, add them to the dozen so they get thirteen or fourteen. Being good to people goes a long way.”
Together, Chris and Sheila work long hours—90 a week most of the time, splitting the responsibilities between them. Sheila tackles the paperwork and health department certifications as well as the softshell business, checking the sloughing crabs every two hours to see if they’re ready to fish up. Chris handles all the phone calls and ordering with the wholesale side, while Sheila manages all the orders and phone calls for the retail side. During oystering season in the fall and winter, he still dives for oysters.
Together, they make a formidable team. It’s clear, Chris is proud to have such a capable, committed partner to share the business with. “It makes a difference. You have someone who’s willing to do what it takes. Sheila’s not afraid to get her hands dirty,” Lingerman said. “She’ll jump in there and steam crabs, filet fish, you name it. She’ll even drive the truck.”
Their work ethic has also extended to their children, three sons and a daughter, who have all pitched in to help whether it was filling orders or fishing up softshells alongside Sheila at Chester River Seafood. Their college-age daughter, Brianna, has even joined Chris oyster diving for the past few seasons.
Lingerman is proud of what they’ve accomplished together as a family over the last 14 years. Chester River Seafood has grown from two boats servicing the wholesale side to 26 in 2020, and during a week in the summer, they might sell up to 300 pounds of crabmeat. Lingerman admits he is ambitious. Walking into the empty cooler at the end of the day makes him feel like he met the challenge, and he’ll wake up again to do it tomorrow with the same fire.
At the end of the day, they’re happy. “It’s a good living,” Lingerman said. “I don’t have to punch a time clock. And I don’t think Sheila’s gonna fire me.” He laughs. “Even though you’re on the road a lot, you set your own hours if you wanted to. It’s the American way, I guess. Build a business and make a go of it.”
Chester River Seafood
4954 Ashley Road, Rock Hall, Maryland
410-639-7018
Facebook
