"Luke Holden comes from a family of Maine lobstermen, but when he went to college at Georgetown University, his parents pushed him to get another career, so he studied finance and took a job on Wall Street. It didn’t last long. In 2009, Holden, now 33, and Ben Conniff, 32, a former freelance food writer, set up their first Maine-style lobster shack in New York City’s East Village. Luke’s dad, Jeff, helped with some of the startup financing. They’ve since expanded Luke’s Lobster to 28 locations (and counting) in the United States, plus a handful of licensed outposts in Japan. As the company grew, Luke’s Lobster – which now does $30 million in restaurant sales – set up a sister seafood company, Cape Seafood, to control their supply chain and ensure that each pound was harvested sustainably, helping the lobstermen whose livelihood depends on it and their coastal communities. This month, Luke’s Lobster got certified as a B Corp, formally incorporating its social mission into the business, one of very few restaurants to do so. In a conversation that has been edited and condensed, Holden and Conniff spoke about how they managed to get their first shack off the ground in a month."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestreptalks/2018/02/07/on-a-roll-leaving-wall-street-to-build-the-growing-lukes-lobster-restaurant-chain/#c92834e51f95
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestreptalks/2018/02/07/on-a-roll-leaving-wall-street-to-build-the-growing-lukes-lobster-restaurant-chain/#c92834e51f95