What began with Edith Millis selling shrimp from the back of a truck has become a four-generation Sneads Ferry family business, now carried on by her great-grandson.
Photography by Geanine Jamison
Who is the Shrimp Lady? Visitors approaching the seafood stand in Sneads Ferry ask the question often. The young man behind the counter delights in responding, “I am.”
Ethan Millis is the great-grandson of the original Shrimp Lady, Edith Millis. When Edith first parked her truck at the foot of the North Topsail Beach bridge and began selling shrimp out of the back of it, she had no idea that her family would continue her legacy four generations later.
In 1985 Edith looked for a way to make a little money selling the shrimp that she and her husband, Jack, had caught. She was also battling cancer at the time. Her simple and very effective solution was to park her truck, put a large sign on the top of it advertising that she was the Shrimp Lady and sell the shrimp out of a cooler. Her plan worked well.
Over the years, the Shrimp Lady has always been operated by a Millis family member even as it moved and expanded. The Millis family has “been in this area for 150 years,” says Randy Millis, Edith’s grandson and Ethan’s uncle.
Randy adds that he, in fact, is a “fifth-generation commercial fisherman.”
Today, the seafood stand offers a wider variety of seafood, including fish, scallops and shrimp, most of which is sourced locally. In 2007 they moved to the corner of Old Folkstone and N.C. Highway 210 in Sneads Ferry, in a space leased from the BP gas station also located on that corner.
After Edith passed in 2000, the Shrimp Lady business went to her son, known by the family as Big Randy. He ran the seafood stand for a few years and then passed it on to his son in 2004. Randy explains that it “went down from my grandmother to my granddaddy to my daddy. Then it went down to my brother and me.”
Randy’s brother, Michael, started helping him with the business in 2011. Michael ran the stand while Randy was working in his many other endeavors. After Michael passed away in October 2025, Shrimp Lady closed for a while until Ethan took it over in the spring of 2026.
Ethan began helping his father, Michael, as a teenager.
“That’s the nice part about it being family,” Ethan says. “I remember being 13, 14, coming out here with dad. As soon as I hit 15, 16, he’s like, can I leave you here for an hour and go get some more shrimp?”
Ethan emphasizes, “This won’t ever leave the family.
Ethan says he hears about people who used to get shrimp from Edith.
“They’d call her and say, ‘Hey, I can’t get over the bridge until, like, 7 o’clock. Can you stay out there?’ As long as she had shrimp, she stayed out there. Because she knows somebody’s going to come and need it.”
Today, the Shrimp Lady carries shrimp, scallops, mahi, red snapper and salmon. Ethan says he tries to offer a variety, sourcing as much as he can from North Carolina. His main seafood provider is Southern Breeze Seafood, owned by his uncle Randy and John Mallette. Randy and John recently moved Southern Breeze to Sneads Ferry from Jacksonville, which makes delivery to Shrimp Lady much more convenient.
The seafood is still kept in coolers. Ethan goes to the fish house each day.
“I get to talk with all the captains, get all my fish, and wash it for the morning, wash out my coolers,” he says.
He is focused on the cleanliness of the seafood, the coolers and the Shrimp Lady stand itself, making sure everything is neat and sanitized every morning before he opens and every evening after he closes.
Ethan says of his uncle, “Realistically, he’s kind of just behind the scenes. He helps me with my ideas. He helps me with making sure I have all the seafood I need.”
In addition to being a commercial fisherman and fishmonger, Randy says that in his spare time, he helps kids “develop in baseball.” Having coached for about 20 years in different capacities, as a school coach and youth league coach, he now coaches his grandson’s travel baseball team.
Randy says he “was 15 years old over there selling shrimp with my grandmother when she first started. And that was before we had a lot of tourists and all of that.”
“We built our foundation on the morals that my grandmother set for that stand,” he says. “That’s why we’ve been here for 41 years.”
Ethan says that while he may take a brief break to continue his education, he intends to carry on the family tradition of being the Shrimp Lady.
“I love the Shrimp Lady. It’s home. I come here every day,” he says.
STOCK UP
Shrimp Lady Seafood Market
989 Old Folkstone Road, Sneads Ferry
(910) 546-8169
shrimpladyseafood.com
Open Wednesday through Monday (closed Tuesdays), 10 am to 6 pm
