Mustard makers, school ply new waters Specialty label brings Eastport icons together

EASTPORT – A Down East company is “cutting the mustard” in the marine trades industry now that the Husson College Boat School is using one of its most popular mustard brands as a calling card.

As staff members from Maine’s Marine Technology Center – The Boat School – make their rounds of conferences and marine industry companies, they carry with them a bottle of “Boat Builders Composite Mustard.”

“People love it,” school administrator John Miller said Tuesday. “People look at it with a smile on their face and say ‘can we eat this?’ And we say, well, it really is Downeast Schooner mustard which is an appropriate flavor to carry that label.”

Although sporting a new name, inside the bottle is the rich yellow Down East Schooner mustard that has made Raye’s Mustard Mill famous.

Owners Kevin and Karen Raye are fourth-generation owners.

Karen Raye said it all started last year when school officials approached her about producing the specialty label. She said she was happy to comply.

Miller credited another Husson College staff member with coming up with the idea. “We were looking for something we could share with all of the members of the Maine Marine Trade Association that we gathered with at the Samoset [Resort Hotel] last November,” Miller said.

Recently, Miller said, the school took nine cases of the specialty labeled mustard to the Maine Boat Builders Show in Portland.

“It has been a big hit everywhere we have gone,” Miller added. “Kevin and Karen Raye have been such great supporters of the Boat School and responded instantly with a ‘yes’ when asked if they could produce our own label. The Boat School and Raye’s are two of Eastport’s real icons so it was a great combination to promote the school.”

The idea of the specialty label has prompted the Rayes to look at other markets. “We are starting to do more and more of these special labels for people. For example, if someone gets married and they want to have a jar of mustard on every table we are doing mustard labels that have their engagement photo on it, so we are trying to have fun with it,” Karen Raye said.

She said the mill’s staff works with the customer to come up with the specialty label design. “You can tell people they can use it as a mechanism to tell people that they ‘cut the mustard,'” Raye said, laughing.

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