MARICOPA COUNTY, Ariz. — There are things you expect to see along a desert highway and then there are Justin Ekelman’s hand-painted signs.
Drivers on State Route 347 between Phoenix and Maricopa usually pass them before they see the old, white cargo van Ekelman parks in a dirt lot off Riggs Road.
He is a man, with a van, who sells seafood.
“I do this year-round, I sweat it out and then when the winter comes, the snowbirds come back and it’s amazing,” Ekelman said. “You can’t bring enough; you can’t fill this thing enough.”
He is also not oblivious to what some people think when they see his Pike Place Market on four wheels: Seafood from a van in the desert? It seems a little sketchy. And a little dangerous.
But if you stop, Ekelman will proudly show you his frozen food vendor permit and other licenses one needs to sell shrimp and scallops on the side of the road.
Ekelman’s business, Shrimply the Best, has a fan following. In fact, one-third of voters in a recent InMaricopa poll named his seafood van their favorite food source.
Shrimp from Rocky Point are his bestsellers but Ekelman keeps his chest freezer stocked with Caribbean lobster tails, mussels and a variety of fish, too. An extension cord plugged into a gas-powered generator keeps everything frozen even when it’s 115 degrees outside.
“If it was sitting in a cooler in ice, it may be a little weird,” Ekelman said.
Selling seafood out of a van has provided Ekelman, a single father of two teenage boys, with enough to pay his bills and keep a roof over their heads. He feels more blessed than he did 15 years ago during the Great Recession.
Ekelman bought his first home in 2008, then lost his job as a carpet and air duct cleaner.
“Long story short, I ended up having to short sell my home, lived with my parents for a year and a half. My dad said come do this,” Ekelman said.
His father, a former door-to-door meat salesman, ventured into the roadside seafood business 40 years ago. Ekelman said his dad used wet rags to keep himself cool during the summer months.
“I did it one year like that. Why would you do that when you could buy a $130 air conditioner? I made a stand, put it in my window, now I have a little cold room,” Ekelman said, pointing to the curtains at the front of his van.
His father retired more than a decade ago and Ekelman retained many loyal customers. The business has not changed much since then, including the rudimentary hand-painted signs along the highway. Those are informative – and nostalgic.
“Ahead: Rocky Point Shrimp,” one of them reads.
“I go to Home Depot, get the wood, get them cut and paint them up, that’s how my dad always did it,” Ekelman said. “I have people stopping all the time saying ‘I can make you professional signs’ and I‘m like, ‘Bro, this is what people see. It’s a lot cheaper.’”
Ekelman also gets his seafood from the same source: His dad’s friend who owns a distributing company and gets seafood shipped to the Valley from across the globe. The company supplies seafood to restaurants, cruise liners and small fry (we couldn’t resist) like Ekelman.
“A lot of people assume I am getting it all from Mexico, it’s not,” Ekelman said. "A lot of the shrimp do but I just had salmon from Alaska, my lobster tails right now are out of the Bahamas, I have got orange roughy from New Zealand, the catfish is from here in the U.S., all sorts of different places but it is wild caught.”
Ekelman said he gets a good deal buying wholesale but the COVID pandemic forced him to raise his prices.
“My lobster tails, I was paying $5 a tail cheaper near 2019, COVID hit and everything went up,” Ekelman said. “I have tried to keep it pretty reasonable but my profit margins have gone down.”
Shrimply the Best accepts cash and credit cards.
A pound of raw, frozen shrimp ranges from $9 to $12 per pound depending on the size and type. Ekelman sells a 5-pound bag of extra jumbo, U-15 size tiger shrimp for $60 a bag. Chilean black mussel meat is $10 per pound. Wild-caught U.S. catfish sells for $6 per pound and orange roughy, a deep-sea perch caught in the waters off New Zealand goes for $12 per pound.
When Ekelman has no customers, he sits in the cab of the van with his makeshift air conditioning unit and reads his Bible.
He’s especially proud of his lobster tails, which are nearly as big as his forearm. An 18–20-ounce tail goes for $36 or two for $68.
“Mother’s Day is crazy; I could fill this thing with lobster and it’s just gone,” Ekelman said. “Father’s Day? Well, we don’t get treated as well as the ladies do sometimes.”
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