A Day At the Docks
Well, Robert moved from Atlanta to Florida to help us open and run The Tides Seafood Market. He has a number of years in the seafood distribution business and has worked in quality control, quality assurance, and production. He rounds out the team and has a much stronger back than I do at this point in my career. We are grateful that he is here to help. Robert had been here for a couple of weeks, and it was time to make the pilgrimage down to Fishbusterz in Madeira Beach and meet ole Mr. Charlie.
Fishbusterz will be our number 1 choice for all Gulf reef species – groupers and snappers mostly, but we will also get wahoo, triggerfish, amberjack, the occasional Mahi, porgies, and the stray blackfin tuna. Really anything can come off these boats and we are game for any and all of it! Charlie has been in the fish business for a very long time and has a very storied career. He currently has 20 longline boats that fish for him out of Madeira Beach. He sends fish all over the country, and supplies many of the big distributors in major metropolitan cities like Atlanta, New York, Chicago, as well as all over the state of Florida. Since we were going there, I thought that we should go to John’s Pass and see if we could get Wild Seafood Co. to sell to us. I had to compete against Wild Seafood Co. for all the years I was in Birmingham and knew the quality to be top notch.
Off to Madeira Beach, Charlie’s place is very small and non-descript. It’s a fish house, no frills, it is what it is. There is a small office, that no one is ever in, and a small, refrigerated warehouse. It’s not so much a warehouse, it’s more the size of your garage, but cold. Fish does not stay here very long. Charlie unloads more boats than anyone else in the area and always has fish; it just never lasts long. When we got to Fishbusterz, there were two boats in the yard in dry dock being repaired. There were 4 or 5 other boats in varied stages of coming and going, fishermen are not known to be organized or on time. Charlie was unloading the F/V Seminole Wind, he was running the podium on the dock and tracking weights on the different species coming across the scales. While we were talking there were nice yellow edge grouper, porgies, and wahoo going into different boxes or vats for customers in St Pete and another out of state. The boats are typically sold by the time they finish the unload. Charlie always has boats coming and going. We talked about how the fishing was and where prices are going. Quality is rarely a conversation with Charlie. His fish costs a little bit more than everyone else because he pays top dollar to Captains that will take care of the fish and get them on ice quickly. Getting into the rotation shouldn’t be a problem, Robert and I are just going to have to rock, paper, scissors to see who gets to go to the dock and pick up when the boats come in.
Down the road a bit is The Wild Seafood Co. They are a top-notch fish company that I have only competed against and have never bought from. Each fish is gill tagged with a QR code. The QR code currently tells you the name of the boat and the areas that were fished to catch that particular fish. These are short trip boats, usually only stay out for a week or so at a time and have tremendous quality. We met with Jason who runs the wholesale department. After asking details about where our shop was going to be what we were going to carry did he decide he would sell to us. While we were talking, they were unloading a boat with another on the way in. The dock had beautiful Gag Grouper and Genuine Red Snapper. We are so excited to partner with these guys, their reputation is incredible, and the quality backs it up!
No trip to St Pete was going to go down without a trip to Casitas for lunch. Robert, MK, and I went and enjoyed a few tacos and they each had a cold beer (I was the DD, as usual). I must say that they have some of the best fried shrimp tacos in all the land!