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Jeff Janvrin knows the cold reality of running a small business, but he can’t shake the dream of reviving Fat Pat’s clam shack.
Janvrin, whose Harpswell roots date back to a great-grandfather who lived on Bailey Island, considers Fat Pat’s a local legend. A comeback for the family business — more than three decades after the once-popular takeout joint slowed traffic on Route 24 near the Harpswell-Brunswick line — could raise its stature to iconic, Janvrin said in a recent interview.
Nevertheless, a year after he expressed hope for a reopening in 2026, Janvrin is investing time and money into a dream deferred — the summer of 2027.
“I’ve done the best I could with what I had,” said Janvrin, citing the need for renovations to Fat Pat’s, legal fees, and his divided attention as he runs a wholesale shellfish business and cares for properties adjacent to Fat Pat’s.
He said he is “trying to re-establish what can be an icon, something that can be good for the town.”
“I have my own vision, my own dream,” he added.
The Fat Pat’s sign has never gone away. It still catches the attention of drivers on vacation, trying to zip from Cook’s Corner or Route 1 down to Orr’s and Bailey islands.
The Fat Pat’s sign is minimalist, rustic, homemade and old school, right down to the arrow pointing at the takeout window a few feet below.
The clams served from that window were the stuff of legend, said Janvrin — memories of which now compel “two, three or four” motorists a day to pull into his driveway, ask about a reopening, and tell him stories about the business that he had never heard. Fat Pat’s last served customers at the Route 24 takeout window in the 1990s, Janvrin estimated.
In a 2025 interview with the Anchor, a business partner and friend of Janvrin’s, Russell Coffin, said the Harpswell area provides a muddy, well-flushed habitat for clams that makes them sweet, tender and less gritty than clams grown in sandy areas. That, combined with a secret batter recipe, made the clams memorable, accounting for those drop-ins from nostalgic strangers in 2026.
The Janvrin family bought the Fat Pat’s property, which included a wholesale shellfish business, from the late Lionel Levasseur in 1989. The Janvrins later closed the clam shack, but they kept the wholesale operation running for three decades. That operation was sidelined for six years because of the death of Janvrin’s father and family disagreements that wound up in probate court. Janvrin reopened the wholesale company in 2025 — Great Marsh Marine Farm Products LLC, a subsidiary of Fat Pat’s Shellfish LLC.
Janvrin acknowledged that he is up against it, so to speak, as he chases his dream of reopening Fat Pat’s clam shack. He has to pour money into the building and property while going through regulatory processes with the town and the Maine Department of Transportation. Meanwhile, he spends a lot of time on the road, running his wholesale shellfish business out of Harpswell and the town he grew up in, Byfield, Massachusetts, while selling his product to businesses throughout New England.
At 62, Janvrin sounds like he’s on a mission, with more at stake than nice stories about couples recalling Fat Pat’s as part of their honeymoon journey through Harpswell.
“I want to do this for the town,” he said. “If you don’t have a dream, then what have you got? If I didn’t try to re-establish this business, then what have I got?”
