Eros in the Age of Coronavirus

“Man plans - God laughs”

Yiddish proverb

Our plan was to first build a customer base among restaurants within an hour’s drive from the farm, particularly in Portland, which has become a big foodie town.

We did that in 2019 with the first 100K of our fastest growing oysters. We learned that we loved selling direct-to-chef, and so decided that for our second act, we would expand to restaurants throughout the country as soon as our inventory would allow.

This winter, Mike and Gloria made a trip to Seattle to try out our national marketing strategy — which was to personally visit restaurants that had previously expressed an interest in Eros, and have them taste test our oyster. Since Seattle is justifiably proud of its own Pacific Northwest oysters and also presents the greatest shipping challenge for a Maine grower, we figured if we could make it there, we could make it anywhere (apologies to Frank).

Mission accomplished — a number of restaurants were considering starting delivery and our first week of orders followed in mid-February.

Then came the Virus. Washington was the first state to shut down restaurants followed soon after by Maine. With no direct-to-chef sales (local or otherwise) we have been using our time-out to get our website set up for online sales direct-to-consumers, a plan even further in the future moved up in the queue due to circumstance.

The good news is that we found out that Seattle seafood restaurants and oyster bars loved Eros as much as their Portland counterparts, and that we can be competitive outside of Maine — even in the Pacific Northwest.

Our first Seattle restaurant — Frank’s Oyster House and Champagne Parlor