Legal Sea Foods is planning for a new facility in Milford to be an "innovation center" for its parent company as it leaves its former home in Boston’s Seaport district.
Legal Sea Foods Restaurant Group first opened as a fish market in Cambridge more than 70 years ago. In 2020, it sold to Medford-based PPX Hospitality Brands, and with the deal, PPX also gained Legal Sea Foods’ 75,000-square-foot processing plant in the Seaport, said Matt King, PPX’s brand president and COO.
The ground floor of the 25-year-old space was a seafood processing facility and upstairs were corporate offices and warehouse space.
“What became really apparent over time was that building was no longer relevant to what needed to be done for Legal Sea Foods from a production standpoint, and would need a lot of money invested in it to upgrade the facilities,” King said.
Rather than try and revamp it, King said PPX identified a seafood company to take over the space. Legal Sea Foods will keep its corporate headquarters in Boston with a 10,000 square-foot office space at 212 Northern Ave. on the Boston Fish Pier, close to partners like North Coast Seafoods, King said. Its new facility will open early next year in Milford.
The PPX Innovation Center will be a 30,000-square-foot facility for PPX’s brands, which also includes Smith & Wollensky and Strega Italiano. The facility will be a space for quality control and assurance, central commissary and distribution, e-commerce and retail fulfillment, research, development and training, King said. It will also be a place for culinary and beverage experimentation.
“Coming in and getting a great quality piece of fish is an expectation, right? It’s sort of like the price of entry. So what do we do now that sets us apart from the rest?” King said. “And I think that’s in how we innovate, how we come up with new items, new recipes, more creative ways of putting a modern twist on what is classic New England seafood.”
The innovation center will be located within Clarke’s 107,000-square-foot headquarters at 393 Fortune Blvd. Clarke is New England’s official Sub-Zero, Wolf and Cove showroom and test kitchen. The building is equipped with solar panels on the roof and a hydroponic farm housed in a shipping container that provides produce and herbs year-round for use in the production kitchen, King said.
Legal Sea Foods will also be able to take advantage of full-scale test kitchens and a TV studio in its new innovation center. King said these spaces will allow their brands to shoot video content to connect with consumers.
King said they’re shooting to have the innovation center open in February 2024. He said they’ve offered employees the chance to move with them to Milford, but he also expects to hire some new team members. The facility will employ around 40 people.
