Monahan’s Seafood Market Feature on Click On Detroit
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Owner Mike Monahan behind the counter at Monahan's Seafood Market on Feb. 3, 2020. (Meredith Bruckner)
Owner of Monahan’s Seafood Market in Ann Arbor reflects on 40 years of business:
From Click On Detroit:
ANN ARBOR – Forty years have passed since Mike Monahan and Paul Saginaw opened Monahan’s Seafood Market -- one of Kerrytown Market & Shop’s oldest establishments -- in December of 1979.
Since then, ownership changes -- namely Saginaw shifting his focus to Zingerman’s Delicatessen in the early 1980s -- and shifts in buyer trends have come to define the market today.
Monahan’s connection to the market started before it carried his name. He worked at the market when it was still owned by Real Seafood Company where Saginaw was a manager. “It was a great business but it wasn’t doing really well at the time,” said Monahan.
Together, Monahan and Saginaw bought the market using loans from family and friends, and within a year they doubled sales.
Catering to international tastes
“The difference between what we were doing and what they had done before is they were doing a fish market but they were catering to the typical suburban cod, whitefish, crab and shrimp (buyers),” said Monahan. “And here we are in a town that’s full of people from all over the world that eat a lot more fish than most Americans eat. And that market wasn’t really being tapped.”
