Saltys Lobster & Co. owner Jonathan Kelly (Photo by Jay Paul)
Since popping up in Richmond in early April, food truck Saltys Lobster & Co. has sold out at every event it’s participated in. Late last year, owner Jonathan Kelly posted a picture of a hefty, plump lobster roll online, eliciting hundreds of likes, heart-eyed emojis and hungry discussion. Now operating five days a week in local neighborhoods and at area breweries, along with a second truck he’s acquired, the startup entrepreneur is looking to grow his seafood-centric empire.
Richmond magazine: Can you tell us about your background and how the food truck launched?
Jonathan Kelly: Roanoke is our home market. I’m proud of where we’re from, and it gave us our start. I went to West Virginia for college, then came back to Roanoke and started Fetch, a software-based food delivery company. Then I moved to Nicaragua and worked for a startup. I had a restaurant in Roanoke called Wokology and a ghost kitchen. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, I had some lobster and posted, “Who wants to go on a lobster run?” We had just done a ramen run to deliver custom ramen packs. The first day we had six orders, second day was 12 orders, third day was 50 orders, and at our peak we were doing 1,000 rolls a day as kits — and we were only open three hours a day. We had the New England split-top rolls, lobster, sweet cream butter and lemon, like a Hello Fresh box on steroids. In 2021, I was thinking about getting a truck, and somebody hit me up and said they had a food truck. I got there to look at it, and it was completely new, and I bought it.
RM: What is it about lobster rolls that started your infatuation?
Kelly: Some people travel for views or travel for whatever they like; I travel for food. When I was in New York, the first place I went was Ed’s Lobster Bar. I remember thinking, “Man I’d love to open a lobster shack.” My friends and I would go to Smorgasburg in Brooklyn, and we always got lobster rolls. I remember going to Luke’s Lobster and dividing it into three pieces just for a bite ’cause it was that good.
A lobster roll from Saltys Lobster & Co. (Photo courtesy Saltys Lobster & Co.)
RM: What was a defining moment of the company?
Kelly: We participated in Blue Ridge Rock Fest, a massive music festival near Danville. We had been a food truck for three months. Over 400 food trucks applied, and they only chose 15. Right before the festival went on, they had a seafood truck drop out. I called our lobster guy to see if it was even possible. It takes five to seven lobsters to make a lobster roll, so if we’re looking at producing 10,000 rolls, you need 70,000 lobsters. It got done, but it was freakin’ wild. It kind of put us on another level.
RM: Why do you think the business has been so successful so quickly?
Kelly: One of the reasons I think we’re so successful, and I say this with a lot of stuff, is that I wasn’t a restaurant dude. We pivoted so quickly because we didn’t know anything. We talk about the journey — we’re not just pushing out food. When you create a business, I think food is the simplest part of it all. The hard part is showing customers that they’re not just customers; they matter. Another big thing I tell my staff is that customers will wait in line, and if the food is banging, they’ll be like, “Damn, that was worth the wait.” But if they wait 30 minutes or an hour and it doesn’t live up to expectations, that’s when they’ll get mad. People will wait for good food.
