Maryland Business Spotlight x Conrad's Crabs & Seafood Market

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is iHeartRadio's Maryland Business Spotlight, presented by Rosedale Bank.
Each week we hear from one local business owner letting
us know where they are on their business journey and
how they got there. Well, I'm here today with Andrea Conrad,
owner of Conrad's Crabs. Thanks for being here.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Andrea, yes, of course, thank you.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
Best Themed Crabs, Baltimore Magazine, Baltimore's Sun, just the best
all over. Why are you guys the best? Why do
you think you guys have the best crabs?

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Well, I think it's where we get the crabs, but
I also think it is our process behind steaming the crabs.
We have three unique things about us, and one is
our seasoning is a proprietary blend. Conrad Seasoning is unique
to us. Jo Spice makes it and you're only ever
going to taste it on our crabs, and people really

(00:50):
love it. And then you know, my husband is a waterman,
so we catch our own and we buy from a
lot of local crabbers as well, because he knows a
lot of people in the industry, So we have a
good base of watermen that supply to us. And we
always steam live to order, which is the main thing
We don't pre steam our crabs, we don't reheat them.

(01:12):
They're always steamed lives to order, and they are always
hand sorted, you know. We sort them on the boat,
then we sort them in the store, and we make
sure to pull out those you know, light crabs what
people call white eyes sometimes so that you're getting a fat,
heavy crab every time you buy a Conrads dozen. And
we stand behind that because our guarantee really is heavy crabs,

(01:33):
or we'll replace them. So we do stand behind our
process and making that why we've been voted twelve years
in a row. Like you said, yeah, that's crabs.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
And I'll tell you what I was just going to
say as you were talking, you actually said what I
was going to say. Whenever I've gone to Conrad's crabs,
and it's been many times, always heavy crabs, you know,
whereas other places, you know, by mistake or for whatever reason,
you get those light ones. You open one up and
you're disappointed. You're never disappointed when you go to Conrad.
So whether you're getting steam crabs or oysters or other

(02:05):
incredible things on the menu, I just love you guys.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
Thank you. We appreciate that we try. We try to
just provide the best quality product, you know.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
Yeah, Andrea, give us important tell us the history behind conrads.
Take me back to like two thousand and three. Okay,
and your husband you mentioned he was a waterman, right,
and what did he do back then?

Speaker 2 (02:31):
So we actually met in college at Michael's Cafe in Timonium.
We've been close with them for years. We met there
and I was a waitress, he was a bartender. We
got married young. I was twenty two, he was twenty five.
We both well. Right out of college. He got into
sales and then kind of moonlighted on the side with

(02:54):
a small crab pot license with fifty crab pots, and
then realized at some point he didn't want to do
sales and I just want to be a full time waterman.
So that is what we agreed to pursue, and it
was it was risky, but he got a you know,
one of the bigger TfL licenses they hold, that's like

(03:17):
a nine hundred pot license. So he kind of went
all out and he started doing that full time. That
was from about two thousand and three. We got married
in two thousand and so then that was two thousand
and three, and he did that for a couple of years.
I actually became the office manager at Michael's and worked there,

(03:37):
kind of worked my way up there a little bit
through restaurant management. So at the time that I was
doing that and he was doing his thing, we decided
we really wanted to open our own place and sell
what we believed to be the best crabs because they're
also Upper Bay crabs. So we just kind of have
this what he does, You know that the Upper Bay

(03:57):
crab just tastes better than a Lower Bay crab, and
they kind of run bigger too, like this time of year,
especially in October. Yeah, that is from the Upper Bay.
I guess they consider north of the Bay Bridge all
the way up to the Susquehanna Flats is kind of
the Upper Bay waters there. But we do buy you know,

(04:19):
we buy Eastern Shore and Lower Bay and those crabs too,
and they're you know, they're all good because, like I said,
we go through the process of you know, ensuring good crabs,
but they definitely have a different case sometimes. So we
were always like, here's are the best crabs. We got
to sell your crabs, and this kind of how we
came up with our slogan, and our name was pretty
easy because they literally were Conrad's Crabs, and so that's

(04:44):
kind of how it came to be. We were interested.
We actually had our partner back in so let's see,
we opened the market in Parkville in two thousand and seven,
and when we went, I was still working at Michael's
and when I kind of said I was leaving, we
want to go do our own thing. Initially, one one
venture didn't really pan out, and once Michael had kind

(05:07):
of heard about that, he had said, oh, I didn't know.
You guys wanted to do your own thing, and he
was kind of interested in helping us. And there was
another partner, Frank from mister Fish who owns Mister Fish
Teasing Company, and so it was the three of us
back at the time. Actually when we very first opened Conrads,
they got us help help started. So I always like

(05:28):
to give credit where credit is due, you know. Back
then when we were young, we didn't have much, so
we needed some you know, financial help and to have
a partnership. And so then so Conrad's Crabs in Parkville
was kind of born then in two thousand and seven,
and we became let's see, Sole owners September of that year.

(05:50):
They were kind of you know, I don't know, sometimes
things are better in your head than any reality. It
kind of you know, they already had their own successful
businesses and maybe it became a little more of difficult
than we all thought. So we just kind of bought
them out and we did our own thing. And you know,
partnerships are hard because you got multiple opinions and these

(06:10):
different things about how you want them to go. So
that kind of led us there for seven years and
then we always I was more into the restaurant end
of the business because that's what I have known and
my family. I do have some family, like even my
grandmother owned a restaurant, the Talson Inn. You remember the

(06:31):
Talson Inn became the Thousand Diner. I mean it was, yeah,
it was a thousand end before the diner, so years ago. Yeah, yeah,
she started that with her siblings. So I tease that
it's in my blood, right, I guess it must do.
So we wanted to open a restaurant and that's when
we opened Perry Hall location in twenty.

Speaker 1 (06:52):
Fourteen, right, yeah, seven years the day of the carryout,
I think, huh.

Speaker 2 (06:59):
And so yeah, isn't that interesting?

Speaker 1 (07:01):
Is why? I know? It's so odd in a great way,
in a great way, and and so you've been there
since twenty fourteen, but people might not know. They should know.
You guys literally have five different options, really, I mean
still the markets, and then the two restaurants, right, you've
got one in Hartford County, Avingdon right, Avingdon.

Speaker 2 (07:25):
Yes, by Wagman's up there, yep.

Speaker 1 (07:27):
And then like a food truck too, Am I not
mistaken about that?

Speaker 2 (07:32):
Yes, we have a food truck. We did that in
twenty twenty one. If you remember, like coming off of COVID,
everybody I see kind of the craze a little bit, right,
like everybody had to get a food truck. He jumped
on that bandwagon.

Speaker 1 (07:47):
But yeah, but what I mean that all these years though,
you've had like so much success because your food is
high quality and if you're from around here, if you
live here, I mean you have to have good quality crabs,
good quality seafood. Are people going to go somewhere else
and you guys maintain that high quality. And that's why

(08:08):
I think one of the reasons why you've been successful,
Do you think.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
Yeah, absolutely, I think it's twofold. You know, we start
with the best quality right in food, and then the
best we pride ourselves to on the best service, sure,
and that's where we come in with, you know, trying
to hire and have a great staff and train them
and you know, to treat everybody that walks through the door,

(08:32):
you know, the way you want to be treated, and
give them a good guest experience. We're always talking about
the experience, you know, Maryland just the art of getting
together and eating crabs is very unique to Maryland. And
I think it's important for the staff to realize just
really how much I guess influence they can have over

(08:55):
an experience, especially in the restaurants, right like our servers
and bartenders and know they're waiting on them, and you know,
just just really you know, whether it's showing them how
to pick a crab or offering them a bib, or
you know, taking their picture as they're all eating. It
is there's so much to it, and it really is great.
And I even I think too, in this day and

(09:16):
age with the cell phones, I've even been thinking a
lot about that. I'm like, oh my gosh, it's actually
a meal where you have to eat with your fingers
and put down your phone right long enough to act
like dine with your family right. Look at that.

Speaker 1 (09:29):
You know, it's so weird because like people from out
of town or you know, different states, they might not
understand the whole crab thing. Oh it's too much work.
I'd rather get a crab cake. But they don't understand,
of course, you know, the backfin part and that it's
more of a social thing. It's more of getting together

(09:49):
with people, eating good crabs at Conrads and and talking,
like you said, putting down your phone and just connecting
with people in a social way. And people from around
here know that, and they know about Conrades and that's
where you go for that kind of experience.

Speaker 2 (10:06):
Yeah, yeah, that absolutely, and that's what we want to
give him. And we've so both the quality and the
service and being successful in that. We do have our partner.
We did when we opened the restaurant. We partnered up
with our chef, Joe Lancelata, and he's been a great
integral part of the success of the restaurants as well.

(10:27):
So he's our partner in Perry Hall and Abingdon Very Cold. Then. Yeah,
another just quick unique thing about the markets is our
partner now in the markets, because he was our partner
when we opened in bel Air. John Ecker started with
us when he was just sixteen years old going to
Loyal High School. Yeah, he worked his way up and

(10:49):
went put himself through college and wow, just left went
to corporate world for a little bit. You know. He
did the corporate thing and just kind of like my husband,
he just didn't he didn't like it. He likes being
in the grind of you know, whether it's the food
industry or the market or the retail, the restaurant business.
It's just in some people's DNA, I think. So he's

(11:11):
been with us for about seventeen years and that's awesome.
He helps me, you know, run the markets, and he's
great with a lot of our marketing initiatives, and he's
my technology partner. There's always something changing, but yeah, it's
been it's been good.

Speaker 1 (11:30):
Andreas. As we approach almost twenty five years of Conrad's crabs,
where do you see the future? Are there any new
initiatives or is it just like let's keep doing what
we're doing. It's working, people love it. What do you think?

Speaker 2 (11:45):
Yeah? I was thinking about that and As entrepreneurs and
business owners. I think we're always sometimes thinking, well, what's
the next thing we were going to do, But then
I look and go, wait, we have, like you said,
four locations a food truck have a whole dedicated shipping
site because we ship our crabs too, and crab cakes
and seafood all over the country if you want them.

(12:08):
That's kind of its own division of what we do
in Parkville. It's a lot so right now, I mean
we're content with just trying to perfect that even more,
I guess as far as that goes, and just like
keeping up with everything and the changing times and technology
and just always kind of being on the cutting edge

(12:28):
of things and specials. And one thing that I wanted
to mention was because of the because we're unique, that
we have been able to grow and can sort of
like wholesale to ourselves, if that makes sense, that we
kind of have like a wholesale into our business as
the market that like sells to the restaurants. Right. So,

(12:49):
because that goes back to sort of the quality question
that you were asking, We've been able to buy direct
from a lot of these buyers, you know, even along
the East Coast, So we don't have to go through
the wholesale, right, so our product can be fresher and
price a little better. Or you know, we're buying direct
from the people who catch the shrimp. You know, we're

(13:11):
drying direct for oysters and clams and mussels and different
fish and all of those things. So it's been nice
to be able to have that. I mean, I guess
if you kind of call it buying power to improve
the product at the locations is another thing that makes
us unique in that regard. You know, being busy yields

(13:36):
fresher product. You know, the more people coming in and
buying it, the more you're going through. So we really
are making stuff fresh almost every day every other day
because all the locations do have you know, kitchen I
call it kitchen food. But at the market's a whole menu, soups, salads,
crab cakes, right, you know, we can cook the fish,

(13:57):
we can steam your snow, crab legs, anything you need.

Speaker 1 (14:01):
Well, speaking of all of the locations, why don't you
let everybody know where those locations are and also where
we can find you, you know, on the internet, socials
and all that. But go ahead, start with the Perry Hall, right.

Speaker 2 (14:19):
Yes, so you can go to our website which is
conradskrabs dot com and that encompasses all the locations, which
then we have the two I'll start with the markets,
I guess the two markets. One in Parkville on drop
A Road, right on the corner there of b Lock
Raven and Dappa. Then we have the bel Air Market,

(14:41):
which is twelve oh seven Baltimore Pike kind of Fulston,
but we're technically bel Air based on the address, but
right in that area off one there. And then we
have the two restaurants. We're in Perry Hall. We actually
moved across the street in March of twenty twenty four,

(15:01):
so our original building is not that you know, we're
right across the street, but right same area. So that's
in Perry Hall and that's been great. That has much
more parking. We just added a patio, like an enclosed
indoor outdoor patio.

Speaker 1 (15:21):
Yes, I've been there, the pergola.

Speaker 2 (15:23):
The pergola structure, so that's been great. That just opened
the end of the summer. And then we have the
Abbingdon location on Merchant Boulevard, like I said, up near Wegmans,
and that is that was the second restaurant and then
the food truck. You know, on our website if you're

(15:44):
interested in it, you know, there's inquiry forms for the
food truck. There's a whole lot of information about catering
because we do you know, we do in house catering
at the restaurants for any event. And now in Perry
Hall we can hold about one hundred and fifty people, well,
I would say with that new addition, so that's great.
And then we have off site catering. We have steam trucks,

(16:08):
so we'll do steam on sites and then we will
do things as simple as just like a crab feast
drop off. You know, if you want it for twenty
five fifty people will drop it off to you out
of the markets. So we kind of covered all the
catering needs as well between all the locations we've done,
you know, oyster events, we'll shock oysters for people or

(16:28):
be at an event for that. We try to do
some festivals. The food trucks will be there different things,
so we're kind of all over the place.

Speaker 1 (16:37):
Yes, absolutely, conrads crab dot com is where it is.

Speaker 2 (16:43):
Right, Yes, conradescrab dot com for everything, all.

Speaker 1 (16:47):
Right, Andrea, thank you so much, Andrea Conrad for your time.
I really appreciate everything you've told us and taught us
about conrades. Everyone knows conrades, but you really kind of
opened up for us, and I appreciate that. And we've
got to get some more people there and have ourselves
some crabs, you know, have big crab parties. So I
appreciate the time. That's right, Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (17:10):
I appreciate your time.

Speaker 1 (17:11):
This has been the iHeartRadio Maryland Business Spotlight presented by
Rosedale Bank