Business Profiles
Fox's Lobster House turns 40 years young this Sunday
By Virginia L. Woodwell
Fox's Lobster House founder Bob Fox, Sr., is seated here next to the restaurant's mascot "Captain Jack, " with current owner Phyllis Fox standing behind him. Surrounding them are members of the staff the two regard as family. The popular restaurant, located on the Nubble, is preparing to celebrate its 40th anniversary on Sunday, Aug. 13.
Photo by Virginia L. Woodwell
CAPE NEDDICK - Out on the Nubble at Fox's Lobster House this coming Sunday, Aug. 13, the staff will be sporting fox ears and fox tails.
The reason?
Fox's is celebrating its 40th anniversary.
In fact, the place is actually 30 years older than that, if you count from the time in 1936 when Frank and Annie Coupe established a lobster pound and restaurant there.
But 1966 was the year that - after several other owners - it became Fox's, when it was purchased by Robert Fox, Sr., of Dracut, Mass.
Bob Fox is now 86, and he reports that he came to York, "like everybody else, to vacation here."
He and his wife, Tillie (Matilda, who died in 2002), built a cottage first on Shelton Avenue in 1962 and in 1964, they settled into Bob's present home on Nubble Road.
Initially a stereotyper with the Boston Herald-Traveler - "I worked there nights in winter 'til it went out of business," he said - Bob was the person at the lobster pound who cooked all the pound's lobsters and clams.
In those earlier days, the pound, with a restaurant seating 40 or so, also sold bait in addition to live lobsters, and it rented out fishing poles, but the business' focus ultimately became the restaurant, with live lobster and bait sales, and pole rentals, all eventually discontinued.
Phyllis Fox, who owns and runs the place now, came to waitress at Fox's in 1970 as 16-year-old Phyllis Winslow, from Ayer, Mass. In 1972, she married Robert Fox, Jr., who was running the restaurant with his parents, and, two years later, the family enlarged the dining room, with its spectacular view of the rocky coast, ocean spume and Nubble Light, to accommodate 65 diners.
Two years after that, in 1974, Bob Sr. and Tillie decided to retire, and Bob Jr. and Phyllis took over the operation. That same year, they doubled Fox's size by converting the second floor above the dining room, which had served as living quarters for staff, into a second dining room, also seating 65. They also, that year, added an outside picnic patio area with tables.
The next major change came in 1986, when Phyllis and Bob Jr., were divorced, and Phyllis bought out Bob Jr.'s interest in the business.
Since then, she and Bob Sr. have remained close, and, this past week, they mused together on some of the changes they've seen across the restaurant's 40 years.
The biggest, they agreed, is probably in the volume of customers served: they guessed that it has easily doubled. On a busy summer's day, Phyllis said, Fox's might now serve lunch and/or dinner to more than 1,000 guests.
And to do so at the restaurant's 130 seats - still 65 upstairs and 65 down, with more at the outdoor patio - Fox's now employs about 65 people, full- and part-timers, in a season that's longer than it used to be. Summers that used to begin on Father's Day and end at Labor Day now extend from May 1 to the week after Columbus Day.
Technology has now also, of course, brought changes, and helped ease the big expansion in volume. Digitization of the dining room's ordering and bookkeeping system has made some major aspects of management now "a breeze," Phyllis said, and giving patrons beepers when there are lines, permitting them to go off for a scenic Nubble stroll while waiting, means that, once seated, they "get served right away."
Another major change: some 85 percent of patrons, Phyllis said, now pay with credit cards. And many take advantage of the live Webcam that Fox's maintains outside, focused on Nubble Light. Guests, Phyllis reported, can be seen waving to it for viewers back home on the Internet.
Some aspects of Fox's, however, do not change, and that's deliberate.
The menu, for example, said Phyllis.
Patrons returning year after year want to know that the same appetizers, the same lobster stew, the same chowders, the same Fox's shore dinners, will still be available
And the same pies.
Fox's has become known for the pies that Phyllis herself makes each day: blueberry, chocolate mousse fudge and chocolate chip cookie, prepared in limited amounts, and sold only by the slice, never whole, despite demand, to assure that Fox's other homemade desserts - apple crisp, for example - are also sampled.
Locally, Fox's may be even better known, nowadays, for the particular management skill Phyllis Fox has brought to her personnel. Just as she personally engages her repeat patrons each year, learning their names, hometowns, personal interests and where they like to sit in the restaurant, so she also manages to know - and know well - each of her employees, and to sing their praises:
"Nancy Wilson is head cashier," she said, "and her drawer is to the penny, every night. … Victor Padolko - he's one of the heartbeats of the place, along with Scott Frici, Patrick Keefe, Justin Fox [Phyllis' son] and Kevin McArdle. … Our salad girls, Anna Pierce and Shauna Thomas, make the most wonderful salads! … We have three marathon runners - Leah Evans, Sara Turner and Wendy Cryan - and marathon runners make great employees: they absolutely love working upstairs."
Fox also bends over backwards to accommodate her scheduling to that of her employees.
Working moms - "I have about 25 working moms," she said. "I'm a working-mom haven. I'm their night out." - appreciate her especially for that, as do people with second jobs and other commitments
The results of such treatment are some exceptionally strong loyalties, with many workers returning to work season after season, some for some spectacular stretches.
Denise Wilford, for example, has worked at Fox's, off and on, since she was in college in the 1980s, as has her sister, Coleen Coughlin. Hilde Trueman has worked there for 12 years, Britney Fox for eight, Steve Fryling for 19 years and Stephanie Trueman for 16.
"It's like family," Wilford said. "The same people come back, year after year, so you know everybody. It's a comfortable working environment."
Her sentiments were echoed by Sue Potito, who's worked for Phyllis Fox for six years.
"She's awesome," Potito said. "She caters to all of us working moms, and she's very understanding."
Phyllis Fox remarried in 1992, to New Jersey civil engineer Stephen Dunne, whom she met skiing. Dunne subsequently took over management of Brown's Ice Cream, just around the corner on the Nubble from Fox's, and the pair have recently also become licensed as real estate brokers working for York Realty.
They make a good team at that business, Fox reported, with her people skills complementing his as an engineer. This year they sold five properties.
In season, the two get time together and away from their respective businesses by going out for breakfast each morning - usually to Molly O's at York Beach.
In the off-season, they find time to ski each year in the Alps.
"If you work really hard, you have to play harder," Fox contends.
Bob Sr. used to help Phyllis out occasionally when she was first running Fox's Lobster House alone. Now Steve is there for her, and Phyllis is there for Bob Sr. She and the restaurant supply him with a fish dinner every Friday, "and if he has company, we cater his party, too," Fox said.
For his part, Bob Sr. said, "I don't know what I'd do without her."
York, after all these years, it's safe to say, might say the same about the enduring Fox's Lobster House.
