Terry And Jon Hartill

Bell Buoy of Seaside

1800 South Roosevelt Drive

Seaside

Terry and Jon Hartill are the third and current owners of Bell Buoy, open since 1946 along U.S. Highway 101 on the southern edge of Seaside. Inside the store is a menagerie of raw, smoked and canned seafood of all types. Next door Bell Buoy runs a small fish n chips restaurant. The store can be reached at 503-738-6348, and Bell Buoy runs an online store at www.bellbuoyofseaside.com selling all the same items.

What do you do?

We supply seafood to half the people who come down to Seaside for vacation during summer, people that own rentals here or vacation homes. Thats our main business. Tourism time is busy time. When its windy and rainy, thats work time we put stuff away and get stuff done for next year. Crabs our specialty. We make our own dips and spreads and pickle our own salmon. Our smoked salmon is really popular; were really low, so were smoking tomorrow. The next thing thats popular is we do razor clams, very popular, of course our Dungeness crab and our crab meat.We sell a lot of canned tuna. We can it here. Christmas time is a big time for us. We ship it (canned tuna) out in gift packs.

How did you get started doing this?

In high school, I started working at an unloading station down in Charleston, Ore., My brother managed that down there, and I went to work for him. Now me and him are partners here. In about 1973 I started. He (my brother) has been in it for 45 years. My dad had a small dairy farm out in Lewis and Clark. That dairy farm was hard work, so we went into the cannery business.

What is the volume of your business?

Theres not a lot of profit in this business, so we need to make a lot of revenue. On a busy day, we probably see 200 customers. Todays a slow day, and were probably only going to see about 25 customers. This year we were up 20 percent, and it was the best summer (weatherwise) since I can remember around here. So it had to be the weather.

How does the economy affect your business?

It hasnt affected our business too bad. Seafood is kind of expensive, and the people who can afford it still have a little bit of money to spend, I guess. Its hard to keep up with the inflation thats going on. I know people dont think theres much inflation, but there is. When I go to the Cash and Carry, theres inflation.

Edward Stratton