Our Story
The Real
American Coast.
The real American coast — the working waterfronts, the families at the table, the life worth slowing down for. And it belongs to all of us.
The Brand
Born From a Coast That Built a Country
The American coast has been woven into this country's identity since the first settlements took hold along its shores. It fed those communities, supplied their trade, and shaped a way of life built on hard work, self-reliance, and respect for the water. Those traditions are still very much alive — in the fish houses on working docks, the crab shacks with screen doors and picnic tables, the families who have worked the same waters for generations. That is the coast this brand is built around.
Whether you grew up on it, discovered it, or are still finding your way to it — the American coast has a way of getting into your blood. The Chesapeake in August. The Delaware Bay at first light. The Gulf Coast on a quiet Tuesday. There is something here that goes deeper than a vacation and lasts longer than a tan. American Coastal Living was built to put that feeling on your back — apparel worthy of this coast and the country behind it. When you wear it, you're part of that story.
Tangier Island, VA
St. Simons Island, GA
The Outer Banks, NC
The Table
The Founder
On the Descent, You Can Already Tell
I started my career at AOPA — the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association — not because the airlines weren't my goal, but because in the early 1990s they weren't hiring. As it turned out, that timing was a gift. Working at the center of general aviation did something to me. It showed me that the soul of aviation lives below the flight levels — in the small airports, the grass strips, the pilots who fly because they cannot imagine not flying. I started instructing on the side out of Leesburg, Virginia, and those cross-country trips with students had a habit of ending at coastal airports and waterfront restaurants, which suited me fine.
When the airlines started hiring again, I began transitioning — part time through the summer of 1998 and all of 1999 — and on January 14th, 2000, I started flying regional jets full time, first with Comair and then Shuttle America. The airline world is more methodical than people imagine. You fly the same routes, the same airports, the same sequence of cities. You get very good at very specific pieces of sky. What it gave me, more than anything, was time in the cockpit — and a deepening respect for the country below.
In 2015 I transitioned to private aviation, flying Citation CJ2s and CJ3s for a decade before moving to the Phenom 300 in January 2025. Flying private brought the GA world back in a way the airlines never could. You rarely go to the same place twice in a row — each rotation brings at least one new airport, often a coastal strip or a field most airline pilots have never heard of. The community of people who care deeply about the flying itself, not just the destination, was all around me again. In some ways, it felt like coming home.
On the descent — working down through the terminal area along a coastal shoreline — you start to see it. The docks. The working boats. The fish houses that have fed these towns for longer than anyone alive can remember. And if you know the coast at all, you already know there's fresh local seafood somewhere close to that runway. Finding it became a ritual. It still is.
What thirty years of coastal approaches have taught me is that the traditions holding these communities together — the craftsmanship, the self-reliance, the pride in doing hard work right — are the same traditions this country was founded on. They are worth celebrating. They are worth wearing. American Coastal Living was built from that conviction.
“On the descent, you can already tell.
There's fresh seafood somewhere close to that runway.”
— Jeff Broomall, Founder
Where It Comes From
Fortescue, New Jersey
On the southern New Jersey shore of the Delaware Bay, about fifty miles south of Philadelphia, there is a small fishing village called Fortescue. Most people have never heard of it — and the people who know Fortescue know exactly what it is: one of the finest blue crab grounds on the Atlantic coast, and a place that was once celebrated as the weakfish capital of the world.
My great grandfather built a cottage there in the 1930s, and the bay became part of the family long before I came along. In 1969, my grandparents bought the cottage at 172 New Jersey Avenue and made it their own — together, they made Fortescue a constant in the life of the family. After my grandfather passed, earlier than anyone wanted, my grandmother became the keeper of that place and everything it meant. Every summer she was there. Every summer the crabs were on the table. That is not a small thing. That is heritage.
Those summers were my first education in what a working coast actually looks and smells and tastes like. My father's career moved us to Williamsburg when I was thirteen, and the James River taught me you could pull blue crab out of almost any water along this coast if you knew where to look. From there I went to school in Daytona Beach, with the Atlantic a few minutes from campus. Then Frederick, Maryland, where the Chesapeake was a short drive and the habit of finding good seafood close to the water never broke. And eventually into a career that turned every coast in the country into familiar territory — not as a tourist, but as someone who arrived by air, found the local dock, and ate what the water gave up that day. All of it traces back to that small bay in South Jersey. All of it traces back to her.
She called it one of the highlights of her life — her words. The morning I flew up from Frederick in the Trinidad, just me, and she met me at Millville. We went flying together for about an hour — over the bay, over Fortescue, low passes along the shoreline so she could see her beloved cottage from an angle she had never seen before. I wanted to give her that view. Then back to Millville, chocked in, and a drive through the marsh to The Landing in Newport. She was already thinking about the she-crab soup before we touched down. That was always her order — and I always made sure she had an extra container to take back to the cottage. I flew home to Frederick alone that evening. She had her soup.
Places like Fortescue are all along this coast — communities most people have never heard of, built by families who worked the water and kept the traditions alive without asking anyone to notice. Our brand exists because those places, and those people, deserve to be celebrated.
The Mascot
“Callinectes sapidus.”
From the Greek and Latin: beautiful, savory swimmer.
In 1896, Smithsonian zoologist Mary Jane Rathbun formally named the blue crab and, perhaps without realizing it, wrote the perfect brand brief. Callinectes sapidus — beautiful, savory swimmer. The genus from the Greek for beautiful swimmer. The species from the Latin for savory. A creature so perfectly itself that the scientist who named it simply described what she saw and what the coast had always known.
What the name doesn't capture is the disposition. When threatened, the blue crab doesn't retreat — it rises. Claws spread wide, body braced, ready to face whatever's coming. It doesn't know it's outnumbered. It doesn't care. That's not aggression — that's dignity. It is one of the most American things in the water.
The watermen who have built their lives around these shores have been doing the same thing for generations — holding their ground through every storm, every shift, every change the coast has thrown at them. People who never asked for recognition, only the freedom to do the work. That is our mascot. That is our spirit.
The Name
Callinectes sapidus
The Range
Atlantic to the Gulf
The Posture
Claws raised. Ground held.
Proudly American.
Proudly Coastal.
Proudly Ours.
This is the story of a coast that helped build a country — and the people who have kept its traditions alive. It belongs to all of us. Welcome to the community.
What We Stand For
The Three P's
We are a startup built on values we believe are worth standing behind. If these sound like your values too, you're exactly who this brand was built for.
Polite.
Respect Goes Both Ways
The founding generation understood that a free society runs on mutual respect — earned, not demanded. The coastal communities we celebrate built their culture the same way. You earn your place at the dock by showing up, doing the work, and treating people right. That standard hasn't changed.
Productive.
Built by Working Americans
The watermen, the fishermen, the family restaurants that have fed coastlines for generations — these are the productive Americans this country was designed around. People who solve their own problems, feed their own families, and take pride in what they build with their hands. This brand exists to celebrate them.
Proud.
Proud of Where We Come From
Proud Americans. Proud of the founding, the traditions, and the heritage of a coast that shaped this country from its earliest days. Proud of hard work and self-reliance. We are not embarrassed by any of it. If that describes you, you're exactly who this community was built for.
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