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An Appetite for Expansion
Written by Brian Bushard
Nantucket's restaurants seek growth beyond our shores.
Just two blocks from the Cisco Brewers Seaport summer beer garden, the Nautilus ownership trio of Stephen Bowler, Liam Mackey, and Clinton Terry have transformed a new space in Boston’s Seaport District into the second coming of their hit restaurant at 12 Cambridge Street on Nantucket. Walk three blocks from Nautilus Pier 4 and you’ll find yourself at Stubby's Boston, the metropolitan version of the Broad Street late-night classic.
For these restaurants, it’s not only a matter of boosting revenue, but of finding ways to overcome the inherent restrictions of owning a business on Nantucket.
“It’s so seasonal on Nantucket, but in Boston it’s year-round,” says Terry, who runs the cocktail program at Nautilus. “You go out in January [in Boston] when it’s cold and miserable outside and the weekends are still pretty good.”
Limited real estate for opening new restaurants, exorbitant construction costs, a business model tied to summer tourism, a cap on the town’s liquor licenses, and high start-up costs are some of the factors that have led to some restaurants expanding off-island—to Boston, in particular. Just two blocks away from Stubbys Boston, diners can reserve a table at LoLa 42, the follow-up to Marco Coelho’s popular LoLa 41, while down the road, customers might opt instead for fries and a milkshake at LoLa Burger, a re-creation of the lunch spot Coelho had owned at the Milestone Rotary.
In just a matter of five years, the food scene in Boston’s Seaport District has embraced some of Nantucket’s tried-and-true restaurants. And more are on the way. When the CambridgeSide Galleria’s food hall reopens this fall, the 30-year-old shopping plaza on the Lechmere Canal will swap out fast-food chains Taco Bell and Burger King for the Nantucket sandwich shop, Fresh.
Wendy Hudson, co-owner of Cisco Brewers, says that after years of considering where to set up another location, Boston made the most sense, because so many visitors from Nantucket come from Boston. “We’re always trying to find ways to maximize opportunities but stay in our lane,” Hudson says.
In 2018, nearly three decades into running Cisco Brewers off Hummock Pond Road, Cisco’s ownership made the decision to expand off-island, first with a brewpub in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, then with Cisco Seaport and finally with a waterfront spot in New Bedford, Massachusetts—a location that provides live music, food vendors, and a full restaurant.
As with the Nautilus team, the seasonality of business on Nantucket was a key reason to go off-island. Cisco Brewers’ Nantucket location, like most island establishments, makes the bulk of its revenue in the summer months and hopefully into the shoulder season. “We try not to lose money [in the winter] but if you can keep people employed and at least break even that’s a good enough reason for me [to stay open]. I take an annual view of it and want it to be open for the community,” Hudson explains. “There are people [on Nantucket] in the winter, but their spending patterns are different. To keep our staff, it makes sense to go off-island. It’s another opportunity.”
Beyond New England, Coelho has opened two additional LoLa 41 locations in Naples and Palm Beach, Florida. Meanwhile, in South Carolina, 167 Raw Fish Market and Food Truck owner Jesse Sandole is celebrating 10 years of operating his sister raw bar in downtown Charleston, where Sandole has been able to go well beyond the food truck and fish market concept, first to a four-seat bar, then to a full 24-seat restaurant.
“I always had aspirations to bring the business off the island,” says Sandole, who went to college in Charleston and opened 167 Raw Oyster Bar there in 2014. “Nantucket is amazing but it’s really difficult with the seasonality. You really have eight weeks to make money and survive, and while you’re doing that you’re working 24/7.”
The allure of expanding off-island also comes from the fact that people want Nantucket year-round, according to Georgetown Hospitality owner Bo Blair. Blair, who has been known for his Nantucket-themed restaurants for years, opened his first on-island spot, Millie’s, in 2010. Seven years later, he expanded the name off-island to DC. “Northwest Washington, DC, and the surrounding area has a tremendous number of people who love the Island. Millie’s is located at the center of that loyal following,” says Blair. In 2025, he plans on expanding the brand to Darien, CT.
“You see how tough Nantucket is,” Terry says. “It’s amazing what Millie’s did between the rotary and the strip, or what Dre [Solimeo] did at Ventuno, the pizza place, and Via Mare. It’s hard. It’s hard to find a space.” Then again, Terry said, expanding off Nantucket is no easy feat.
“We’ve heard so many offers, ‘Oh I have a spot for you in Austin, in West Palm,’” he says. “It’s tough because we’re actual workers. When we set things up, we’re there for the first six months we’re open. That’s part of it, even finding a chef partner [Steve Marcaurelle], we couldn’t have done it without him. We’re just not wanting to hand over a folder full of recipes and say good luck because the story gets lost. We’re not TGI Fridays, we want it to be personal. There are chains that do it well, but some are soulless. We wanted people to go to Boston and say ‘Oh, I feel like I’m on Nantucket.’”
Clearly, Boston has an appetite for what Nantucket has to offer, and the expansion of island restaurants in the Seaport and beyond is likely to be a trend that continues.
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