Woodman’s Customer Stories – Ted

At Woodman’s, our customers are everything to us. And in honor of the 100^th Anniversary of the Fried Clam in 2016, we interviewed a few of our customers to learn about their memories of coming to Woodman’s. In this video, we spoke with Ted Marshall of Essex.

My name is Ted Marshall. I’ve been in Essex my whole life, although I’m never going to be a lifelong resident of Essex because I wasn’t born here, but I was on the river by June 1st when I was three months old. My first recollection of Woodman’s was coming back from Crane Beach in my mother’s station wagon and stopping here for a pint of fried clams and that was my very first fried clam. We had a tailgate party outside, in the olden days. I’ve been boating this river ever since I was a little kid and currently run a boat charter and fishing business here, and I send most of my clients over here when we return from fishing or beach trips to get their fried clams and things like that.

I worked here in the mid to late 70’s for three or four years, mostly in the summers. My first restaurant experience, my first cooking experience. I went on to many other restaurants and it also taught me how to do the clambake, and I did commercial clambakes myself for a number of years, so that was a big part of my life. And we’re working on the boats, getting them ready today, and I hooked up with my two buddies here and decided to come down here for lunch before tourist season, so that we can still get in and get the goods. And they have some of the best lunches around during the winter months — all year-round, but during the winter months you can get in and have a nice leisurely lunch. It’s just a great place.