It was the summer of 1997, during the salmon-fishing season in the Prince William Sound, Alaska. Ryan Rogers was out on the water when word came through that someone was trying to reach him.
“It took me two days to get to a phone,” he says. “I was like, oh my god, who died?”
Nobody, thankfully. On the line was his friend Mike West, the Eugene restaurateur known for his successful restaurants and for founding the Chef’s Night Out fundraiser, who had found a fish market for sale on 7th and Blair. He thought Rogers should buy it.
Rogers, then 28, was a commercial fisherman with an economics degree from the University of Oregon and no idea how to run a business. “What I did have was determination and a really strong work ethic,” he says.
Fisherman’s Market had been open since 1988, when Dick and Carolyn Ramus started it as a seafood retailer. Rogers kept the same name and model and spent the next few years keeping the lights on, leaning on income from the fishing season to make ends meet. “It was touch and go on whether we’d survive,” he remembers.
That was, until they started frying.
Before the kitchen went in around 2002, staff served fish and chips out of a mobile trailer parked outside, passing steaming baskets through a window to customers seated inside. Once a kitchen was installed, Fisherman’s Market expanded its menu and watched its customer base grow alongside it. Patrons would come in for lunch and leave with a filet. And then they’d come back the week after.
“People shop routinely while they eat,” Rogers says. The overlap of market traffic and restaurant patrons gives Fisherman’s Market a pace and heartbeat that most restaurants don’t have. With no dead hour between lunch and dinner, “We’re busy all the time,” he says. “Our doors are open, so we’re open.” Employees, he says, tell him they like having no dull moments on the floor.
Sourcing his crab personally when he can, Rogers drives his truck up and down the Oregon coast depending on where the catch is. “If there’s not crab in that tank, I’m not happy,” he says. “Luckily, this week, it’s Newport.” His diesel truck runs on used vegetable oil from the restaurant’s fryers, and he’s driven at least 400,000 miles on the re-used fuel.
Fisherman’s Market holds an Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife certification that allows it to purchase seafood directly from commercial fishermen, and Rogers has maintained partnerships with several fishing families for years.
The restaurant runs on the FISH! Philosophy, a framework adapted from Seattle’s Pike Place Fish Market, that’s built around four central ideas: play, be there, make their day and choose your attitude. Rogers fosters energy on the floor by giving his staff creative latitude and treating them like family.
Customers, in return, are more loyal than Rogers could’ve asked for. “I’m the luckiest guy you’ll ever meet,” he says, noting that he even “inherited” many customers from the original owners. Faithful customers, he says, are the key to becoming world famous.
While it has a way to go before total world domination, Fisherman’s Market was featured on Food Network’s Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives in 2014. Rogers cut his Alaska season short and shut the restaurant down for two days during production. He estimates the shoot cost the business tens of thousands of dollars between lost fishing revenue and closed days, but that “in the end, it all paid off — it put us on the travel map,” he says. Twelve years later, people still walk in because they watched the episode.
Rogers, now 66, has spent years building ways to support his customers and the broader community. Fisherman’s Market has been part of Chef’s Night Out, the community fundraiser benefiting Food For Lane County, for 27 of its 34 years. The restaurant has also recently supported Burrito Brigade, a nonprofit providing free meals in Eugene, along with local Rotary clubs. He says the community investment feels more urgent now that he’s thinking about what comes next.
This summer, Rogers will step back from the fishing season for the first time since he was 19. His son, Cole Rogers, 29, will captain their fishing vessel, the Cat-Bil-Lu, through the Prince William Sound while Rogers stays in Eugene. General manager Rob Keiser, who has run the restaurant during Rogers’ fishing seasons for more than five years, will take over day-to-day operations. Rogers says he can’t quite picture what the summer will look like without the boat under him, but that he’s looking forward to running a Fisherman’s Market food cart at the Prefontaine Classic over the Fourth of July weekend.
“I’ve caught over 30 million pounds of salmon in my career,” he says. “I’m not a cook, but I love to feed people.”
Fisherman’s Market, 830 West 7th Avenue, Eugene, is open 10 am to 8 pm Sunday through Thursday, and 10 am to 9 pm on Friday and Saturday. Its food cart at Square Deal Lumber Company, 4992 Main Street, Springfield, is open from 11:30 am to 6:30 pm Tuesday through Saturday, 541-484-2722, EugeneFishMarket.com.