MEET OUR FARMERS

CHRIS GARGIULO

On the few days he's not at his Cotuit Oyster Farm, you might meet Chris Gargiulo in court. That's because he's a per diem trial court officer for Barnstable County, with tasks like taking people into custody and escorting the judge in and out of chambers.

This is the last vestige of the shellfish farmer's original career in security. The Belmont native came from a family of lawyers, but decided to instead pursue the field of criminal justice at Northeastern University. "I just wasn't interested in going to college for four years straight," Chris explains. "Northeastern has a co-op program. You go to school for three months and work in the field for six. Working in the District Attorney's Office in Middlesex County, for example, really gave me a good overview of the criminal justice system."

One of his co-op assignments was with the First Security Company, and it went so well that when he graduated he was offered an Account Manager position. Supervising a staff of 30, Chris wore a suit and didn't carry a gun. But he learned plenty about both managing people and handling security issues. In less than two years, he moved on to a larger company, State Street in Quincy, and continued to climb the career ladder there. As Area Manager, he had 120 employees reporting to him before he was 30 years old.

But his situation changed when the company was bought by Pinkerton and a lot of staff was laid off. For awhile he worked in Human Resources. His rather meteoric rise became a disadvantage. "I could have taken a $19,000 pay cut and stayed," he says. "They told me that I was a young guy, promoted fast, and that they had guys working for them for 15 years who were making less."

After another job in human resources ended after 9/11 (several of his firm's clients were in the World Trade Center), Chris decided to move out from behind a desk and help his brother, Richie, with his fledgling landscape design business in Jamaica Plain. Working together, they got the company off the ground, so to speak.

"But I had always had the goal of running my own business," Chris says. "And after vacationing on the Cape virtually my whole life, I was looking for a way to move here and making a living." He moved to Cotuit and started working for the venerable Cotuit Oyster Company, whose roots go back to the middle 1800's. He had always enjoyed casual clamming and oystering, but wanted to learn more, so he took a course in aquaculture proficiency at MASS Maritime. When owner Dick Nelson, who had run the company for 30 years, was ready to get out, Chris was ready to commit to buying it.

"You have to decide how to live your life," Chris believes. "Some people like to do the grind every day. Some people like to take risks that aren't guaranteed. I'm one of those people."

Today, he's making excellent use of his management experience. He has a 33-acre grant, five employees, and harvests hundreds of thousands of oysters and hard shell clams each year. He has a wholesale license and a small retail operation as well. He makes deliveries personally to Cape restaurants like the Regatta and Sienna, as well as Legal Sea Foods in Boston, and has a trucker who takes Cotuit oysters to New York and Chicago. "I've had to do very little marketing," Chris says, "I sell every oyster I produce right now."

His wife Kristie, a former pre-school teacher, does the bookeeping and a "little bit of everything else"for the farm, and nine-month-old daughter Elena provides, he says, "our daily entertainment." Chris also likes fishing and just being on boats. Indeed, when he had some time between jobs, he sailed from Boston to Lisbon with his father and two other crew.

While Cotuit oysters are familiar on restaurant menus nationally, around town, he says, he's not even the most-recognized member of his family. "I have a black lab named Moe," he explains. "He's the one that most of the people in town know."

To learn more, go to: www.cotuitoystercompany.com