This 53-year-old 'fish mongress' earns $200,000 a year: 'You just do what needs to be done'

Laura Foley Ramsden's passionateness for food is successful her DNA.

The 53-year-old is simply a fourth-generation food mongress successful Massachusetts. Her great-grandfather founded Foley Fish backmost successful 1906, and it's been successful the household since. Ramsden and her hubby bought it from her parents successful 2004.

Though they sold the institution to specialty nutrient distributor Chefs' Warehouse successful 2021, Ramsden and her hubby stay actively progressive with the concern her household started.

Over the years, Rasmden has played a relation successful astir each facet of the Foley Fish business, from packing food to gathering a societal media presence. Her yearly wage started astatine $23,000 caller retired of college, and she earned $200,000 successful 2021, erstwhile the institution sold. Her authoritative rubric was astir precocious VP of sales, but she's amended known arsenic the food mongress.

Though the satellite has changed a batch since her great-grandfather started selling fish, Ramsden says the concern inactive looks beauteous similar: "We're truly conscionable focused connected getting the food disconnected the vessel cut, packed arsenic rapidly arsenic imaginable and turned backmost astir to our customers."

Ramsden clocked her archetypal hours for Foley Fish during the summertime she was 15. "I worked 1 time packing fish, making boxes, opening tins, and I thought it was truly acold and truly agelong and truly atrocious and told my dada I changed my caput and I wanted to beryllium a autobus miss aft each astatine a restaurant."

But her dada told her Foleys don't quit. His words stuck: Aside from a little stint successful nationalist relations, she's been with the institution ever since.

Grateful to her parents for making her enactment connected the works floor, Ramsden has learned astir about each relation wrong the business. From packing and shipping to shoveling ice, she's gained a assortment of skills retired of necessity.

"When you tally a tiny business, you conscionable bash what needs to beryllium done," she says.

Many presume the company's caput fishmonger would beryllium male. People person adjacent gone truthful acold arsenic to inquire if Ramsden's brothers would beryllium the ones to instrumentality implicit the household business. But this was the way she wanted, and she's arrogant to beryllium a pistillate successful a male-dominated industry. 

"When my ma joined the business, she was the food mongress. And truthful past erstwhile my hubby and I bought the business, I was the food mongress," she says.

Ramsden hasn't had problems arsenic a pistillate successful a male-dominated industry, she says. She's equipped herself with accusation and acquisition to beryllium a assets and collaborator for her antheral colleagues.

And being a food mongress has ne'er meant little enactment for her than a antheral would instrumentality on. In Ramsden's role, each time tin look antithetic depending connected what needs to get done, from bundle plan to merchandise evaluations.

"In a tiny business, you're benignant of wearing a batch of hats, and arsenic a food mongress, I decidedly deterioration a batch of hats," she says.