3:01 pm Daily Log
One of the restaurants that I know uses local oysters/seafood first and foremost is Gilligan’s. I think it’s great that they make a point to use as much local seafood as possible. It’s probably easier to just take what their standard food suppliers have on the truck, but if a chef or kitchen manager takes the time to take delivery of local seafood then they are not only supporting the community that supports them but they’re also providing a better product to their customers.
I believe that the customers would even be willing to pay extra if they knew it was truly local seafood. For an experiment I think it would be interesting to see what sells more from the ’specials’ board:
IMPORTED Shrimp Dinner – Thailand – $18.95
U.S.A. Caught Shrimp Dinner – Texas - $19.95
LOCAL Caught Shrimp Dinner – Shem Creek – $20.95
…will any restaurants do this experiment? This is a win-win opportunity if the result is that the LOCAL shrimp sold more than the other two specials.
A lot of chef’s/kitchen managers say the local shrimp costs too much and it hurts their food costs, their measure of efficiency/profitability. However, if you could get $1 more per local shrimp entree then you could afford the better, fresher local shrimp.
Let’s say, just for example, local shrimp cost $8 per pound and other shrimp cost $6 per pound (same size). If there is a third of a pound of shrimp in an entree (10 shrimp) then the restaurant would have a shrimp cost per entree of $2.67 for local, and $2.00 for the other. By raising the price of the LOCAL entree $1 and proudly marketing it as LOCAL you could actually INCREASE your profits, you would make 33 cents more per entree of local shrimp, thus you would decrease your food costs.
1/2 pound of shrimp per entree gives you costs per entree of $4 local, $3 other – in this example a 1/2 pound portion is your breakeven point. Does anyone serve more than a 1/2 pound of shrimp per entree?
Since the previous post about local restaurants selling local seafood I’ve learned some new information. I was told by an employee of Gilligans that they sell too much shrimp to be able to sell local shrimp so they get their shrimp from a distributor of “Wild Caught Domestic Shrimp” that comes from the Gulf of Mexico. Apparently, Gilligans sells about 400,000 pounds of shrimp at its 9 locations throughout the Charleston area, but they don’t buy any of their shrimp locally…they DO NOT USE ANY LOCAL SHRIMP. They claim that their customers would complain about the lack of consistency in the size of the shrimp. So none of their shrimp is local. This is hearsay, of course, but I’ve gone in to the restaurant and asked directly … Please call them and ask them for yourself 843-853-2244. If you get a different answer than I did then please let us all know.
I sold shrimp straight off the boat to 4 restaurants this summer…I offered to sell local shrimp to 24 other restaurants in Mount Pleasant, Isle of Palm, and Sullivan’s Island but they all had their reasons for not buying local shrimp. The 4 restaurants that bought shrimp straight off the boat are The Boathouse on Isle of Palms 843-886-8000, Sullivans Restaurant on Sullivans Island 843-883-3222, Bambu in Mount Pleasant 843-284-8229, and Fishers Sports Pub and Grill, Johns Island, 843-243-0210. These aren’t the only restaurants that sell local seafood, but you really have to ask in a direct manner whether the seafood you might order was caught locally. Ask them what boat it was caught from or what fishhouse it was bought from; in other words, ask the server how he or she knows it is local seafood.