Cousins Maine Lobster, the seafood franchise that became a Shark Tank success story, is plotting to bring a brick-and-mortar restaurant to Fisherman’s Wharf.
Rajat Mohan, a Cousins Maine Lobster franchisee and owner of Worldwide Foods LLC, applied for an on-site general eating place license for the new seafood restaurant at Pier 41 Marine Terminal. No details were immediately available on an opening date.
Upon opening, the new restaurant would neighbor multiple other seafood eateries, including the Franciscan Crab Restaurant, Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., Chowders and Swiss Louis Italian & Seafood.
Pier 41 hosts multiple berths for ferries to Sausalito, Tiburon and Angel Island and a “short hop” boat east to the Ferry Building.
The chain was founded in 2012 after two cousins from Portland, Maine—Sabin Lomac and Jim Tselikis—brought their experience with the state’s seafood cuisine to a West Coast-style food truck format. The formula achieved funding on a fourth-season episode of NBC’s Shark Tank before expanding to brick-and-mortar restaurants in Georgia, Florida, New York, North Carolina, Ohio and Tennessee, as well as a now-closed location in West Hollywood, California.
Food trucks bearing the restaurant’s name already circulate widely around the San Francisco Bay Area, hitting East Bay and South Bay farmers markets and night markets, not to mention San Francisco’s Marina Green, Embarcadero and Market Street.