Want up-to-the-minute information concerning the availability of seafood from the Gulf of Mexico in the wake of the BP drilling disaster? It’s been tough to get at so far, but the Louisiana Seafood Promotion Board has put up a website, www.louisianaseafoodnews.com, that aggregates pertinent news from a variety of sources and puts it in a context full-service operators can understand. Let’s hope the site will soon have more positive news to offer than is on there now.
We all know the grim news and grimmer pictures associated with media coverage of the BP oil spill in the Gulf. But while full-service restaurant operators share deep concerns about the future of this important resource and of the coastal residents who are bearing the brunt of the tragedy, they also have need for some specific business information to help them operate now and plan for the future.
Specifically, if you menu fresh seafood from the Gulf, you want to know how much shrimp and how many oysters are available, what they will likely cost and, if possible, what the price and supply situation looks like in the near future.
It’s been tough to discern this particular information from most news stories. So the Louisiana Seafood Promotion Board has come up with www.louisianaseafoodnews.com to get the word out to all parts of its constituency, including restaurant operators. There are many different angles to this story, but the site, updated daily, is meant to give you an idea of the direction you may want to go. Some of the stories are downright scary (“30,000 Lbs. of Shrimp Seized In Restricted Gulf Area”); others might give operators an idea of how to circumvent the crisis (“Shrimpers Use Internet to Sell Direct to Public”). But even if you visit just once you’ll get a sense of the scope of the problem.
Give it a look when you get a chance. This website could turn out to be a valuable resource for many restaurant operators.
