Can you imagine no oyster bars crowded with patrons eyeing shuckers opening one perfect Gulf oyster after another? No music crowds pressed shoulder to shoulder in Austin venues. No crowded Bourbon Street restaurants overflowing with locals and tourists. There is a new norm coming to the Gulf and the country, and life will be different.
The economic collapse of the economy caused by Covid-19 has strained the current food supply chain for both agriculture and seafood, especially Gulf seafood. The majority of Gulf seafood is sold packaged for use in the nations restaurants and supermarkets seafood cases. Only oysters are almost exclusively sold to restaurants; restaurants that have reduced orders to next to nothing because of the “stay at home” mandates.
“As supermarkets rush to restock shelves with other seafood, the coronavirus pandemic has created chaos in the oyster supply chain, almost completely erasing sales to distributors and restaurants,” said Beth Walton, executive director of Oyster South and a board member of the Gulf Seafood Foundation. “To offset the steep decline in restaurant traffic, most other seafood is able to shift products once bound for restaurants into new sizes, packages and labels necessary for supermarket sales. Most oysters don’t have that luxury, certainly farm-raised oysters for sure.”
To read the rest of the story, please go to: Gulf Seafood News
