Before Larry Mellum began his senior year at Lewis & Clark, he was required to meet with his advisor in the business department, Ken Pierce, to discuss the upcoming semester. He was met with a longer-term question: “Well, Mr. Mellum, what do you think you’re going to do when you get out of college?” Mellum gave a waffling answer, referencing plans to secure a job and get into management. Pierce was unsatisfied. He continued to press. “What do you love?” This time, Mellum responded in earnest––he loved skiing, backpacking, and the great outdoors. Pierce instructed him to write his senior thesis on the business of owning a ski shop and sent him on his way.
Who
Larry Mellum BS ’72
Major
Business
Athletics
Four years of L&C football
Advice
“Keep pushing!”
“He was the first person in my life that suggested entrepreneurship,” Mellum says. “And by the way, I earned an A on that paper.”
After graduating, Mellum began his career in the restaurant business, waiting tables and bartending before moving into management, which led to his appointment as Red Robin’s vice president of operations. When he started, the franchise had four restaurants; by the time he left, it had grown to 40, about half of which Mellum had brought in. He soon felt the itch to start his own business and opened Charlestown Street Café in Seattle, a beloved neighborhood eatery that thrived for 20 years.
“There was something about our clam chowder,” Mellum says. (Don’t bother asking about a secret recipe; he insists it’s just good-quality ingredients.) “After a few years, we were invited to a chowder cook-off in Seattle with all the major seafood restaurants in town––and there were some great ones. But we won, and then we won again the next year.”
In 2003, Mellum opened Pike Place Chowder. It didn’t take long for word to spread, and soon, lines crawled around the block at lunchtime in downtown Seattle. It remains one of the nation’s busiest restaurants, serving hundreds of thousands of locals and tourists each year.
Around 10 years ago, Mellum began thinking of ways to give back to the region that he feels has given so much to him. In 2018, he was struck by the viral story of an orca whale in Washington state that had carried her dead newborn calf around on her nose in an act of grief, and he decided to spend time learning about the species’ modern environmental challenges. This led to his current position as board president of the Salish Center for Sustainable Fishing Methods, a nonprofit that fights for the protection and restoration of the Salish Sea, which is adjacent to British Columbia and Washington State. The organization’s more recent work has focused on seaweed farming on Lummi Island––a practice that has proven benefits in tackling climate change.
“I feel like I’m doing something that will make a difference in people’s lives, and I’m having fun doing it,” Mellum says. “It helps ecologically, but it also provides a commercial vehicle for people to succeed. This is a starting point for future generations––I have great faith in the young people who are working to turn a corner on the environment.”
