The Turner family's seafood legacy spans over a century and four generations. In 1920, twenty-year-old James F. Turner emigrated from St. John's, Newfoundland, to begin his career on the Boston Fish Pier. His hard work and relentless passion for quality quickly distinguished him as a leader in the booming seafood industry. In 1954, Jim opened Turner Fisheries, a wholesale company committed to supplying only the freshest New England seafood. The company became so well-regarded that in 1978, Westin Hotel executives sought permission to use the Turner Fisheries name for their flagship restaurant in the Boston Copley Square hotel.

When reduced fish stocks and new regulations transformed the industry in the 1980s, Jim's son John created J. Turner Seafoods in Gloucester in 1989, specifically designed for the new landscape. In 1994, John's four sons opened Turner's Seafood Grill & Market in their hometown of Melrose, featuring a fresh fish market and turn-of-the-century oyster bar. The family expanded to Gloucester in 2006, launched an online Dock to Door shipping market in 2010, and in 2013 opened Turner's Seafood at historic Lyceum Hall in Salem -- the very building where Alexander Graham Bell made the first public demonstration of the telephone. Today Turner's processes all fish in-house and serves an authentic New England experience across its locations.