Ekone Oyster Co.

Ekone Oyster Co. was founded in 1982 when Nick Jambor built a small smokehouse as a birthday gift for his wife Joanne — a project that turned into a business when their interest in oyster farming led them to start smoking and selling the bay's oysters. Over the next three decades, the operation grew into a full cannery and processing facility, becoming well known for its tinned smoked oysters. In 2017, the Jambors sold Ekone to Taylor Shellfish Farms, the largest farmed shellfish producer in the United States and a fifth-generation family operation with roots going back to the 1890s in Puget Sound. The brand name, facilities, and team stayed intact.

The name Ekone comes from the Chinook language, meaning "Good Spirit" — a fitting name for an operation on Willapa Bay, the traditional territory of the Chinook Indian Nation and one of the cleanest estuaries on the West Coast. Fed by cold Pacific tides and five freshwater rivers draining the Willapa Hills, the bay supports some of the most productive oyster farming in the country, free from the industrial and agricultural runoff that affects many other growing regions. Taylor grows Pacific oysters on 350 acres of tidelands in the bay, harvesting them at peak size and bringing them directly to the on-site smokehouse and cannery in Bay Center, Washington, where they are brined, cold-smoked over maple, birch, and beech wood, and packed in organic sunflower oil in small batches. Every step — farming, smoking, canning — happens in-house.