separate locations, he’s familiar with unpredictable stress.
Before COVID-19 hit, he sold about 98 percent of his farmed oysters to restaurants
in Rhode Island and New York City. When the restaurant shutdowns
took place, he was out of luck with distributing his product to eateries that were
trying to figure out how to turn into takeout machines, which did not include
shucked oysters on the menus.
“In a week, sales went down by 98 percent. It was a pretty dramatic and abrupt
hit,” he says.
During that time, Opton-Himmel had already hired four more staff members
to add to his team of four to assist in the busy spring and summer growing and
harvesting season, but he had to immediately pull back from filling the seasonal
positions. At the same time, he had to think of a game plan to sell the oysters
that were quickly growing larger in their cages, so he could clear the way for
the next batch of oyster seed. That’s when he amped up direct-to-consumer sales
through home delivery and tapped into locally owned grocery stores.
He and his team created their own online storefront to sell their oysters by
mail order (this continued up until mid-June, then was put on hold after restaurants
reopened). He sold the oysters from
his two farms along with locally harvested
wild clams and scallops from their fishermen
friends to ship directly to the homes
of seafood lovers in New England, New
Jersey and New York.
During that time, Opton-Himmel also
connected with Patrick McNiff of Pat’s
Pastured beef, pork and poultry farm in East
Greenwich to have his oysters be a part of
the farmer’s farm-to-home delivery program.
Walrus and Carpenter’s sales manager also
reached out to Dave’s Marketplace to temporarily
get Walrus and Carpenter Oysters
in the seafood markets of the local grocery
store chain, as well as Urban Greens Co-Op
Market, which, on its first push, sold out of
about 1,600 Walrus and Carpenter oysters
in less than an hour while running a $20
special for a bag of twenty oysters. The shellfish
are also occasionally available at Fearless
Fish Market, the Eddy is currently running
a special on the bivalves for its new outdoor
patio, and many restaurants are serving them
again since they’ve reopened. The direct-toconsumer
strategy was all in an effort to
move product quickly.
“We had to cut all our prices, but the
reality is we have to move our inventory
46 RHODE ISLAND MONTHLY l OCTOBER 2020