Oyster spat on shell sales how to#
Oyster spat on shell sales full#

What troubles Brawley the most is thinking about this coming winter. There was plenty of demand for that local flavor and taste for the oyster, which was great.” But even so, the Coop’s sales never exceeded 60 percent of their typical summer volume. “June, July, and August were fairly robust. Thankfully, the partial reopening of restaurants over the summer threw a lifeline to the industry, says Brawley. Because it wasn’t like people were knocking on our door looking for new oysters.” But some of these smaller guys, I just can’t put it on my plate or on our list for that matter.

Oyster spat on shell sales full#

“I had to basically say to guys who’ve been selling through the full year, I’m going to stick with you. “I had to scale back a little bit on the number of farms,” Brawley explains.

Oyster spat on shell sales how to#

With springtime sales reduced to a trickle, the Coop - which has six member farms but regularly purchased from up to fifteen farms before the pandemic – also had to decide how to allocate its limited sales opportunities. “They had tens of thousands of oysters in their coolers, and they weren’t going anywhere.”

“I brought oysters back, so that farmers could put them back on the farms, just to sort of help bail out some of the wholesalers,” Brawley recounts. “That’s the date that I remember when things just stopped.”Īfter receiving calls from wholesale customers who were suddenly stuck with unsalable inventory, the Coop made the difficult decision to accept returns and offer refunds. It was operating in winter mode when the pandemic struck. In winter, the Coop ships its product to larger wholesalers serving out-of-state metropolitan areas. In summer, when local demand swells due to coastal tourism, it sells most of its oysters to Rhode Island wholesalers who pick up directly from the Coop’s facility on Walt’s Way in Narragansett. Typically, the Ocean State Shellfish Coop varies its business model with the seasons. With restaurants closed or operating at reduced capacity this spring and summer to slow the spread of Covid-19, oyster sales were a predictable casualty.

Raw bars, with their skilled shuckers, depend in turn on dine-in restaurant traffic.

“There is no other destination for Southern New England oysters,” Brawley states plainly. Like most oyster businesses across Southern New England, the Coop sells 100 percent of its product into the raw bar market. In fact, it may be among the local economic sectors hardest hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. But this flourishing sector is unlikely to experience much growth this year, says Graham Brawley, manager of the Ocean State Shellfish Coop. Over the last decade, oyster aquaculture has been one of Rhode Island’s fastest rising industries.