Crab Meat Shortage Clawing at the Restaurant Industry

DEWEY BEACH, Del. - A crab shortage is hitting home for some popular restaurants at the Delaware Beaches. There's not enough help to catch, pick, pack and ship the shellfish. Restaurants, suppliers and watermen are feeling the effects of shellfish shortages created by the increased demand from business getting back to normal after the pandemic. 

Woody's owner Jimmy O'Conor is heartbroken. A blue crab meat shortage has forced him to cut platters down from two crab cakes to one and to eliminate takeout. He says most customers understand and some have been crabby.

"I've heard from people that you can go and get an inferior product, but we're not willing to do it," O'Conor says. 

Each Woody's crab cake has 6 ounces of crab meat in it. They go through 150 pounds of crab meat a day to make 600 crab cakes, but O'Conor is already cutting that number down and says he might completely sell out of crab cakes if he doesn't get more consistent shipments in the next few weeks.

"It's not like I need ten cases, I need 100 cases and it's just not available, O'Conor says. "People aren't picking crabs down on the Eastern Shore, Virginia, all of the crab houses are at a fraction of what they usually do."

Suppliers are seeing a shortage in every crab species that they sell. 

Samuels & Son Seafood Co CEO Sam D'Angelo says, "The shortage has been going on since before the coronavirus, but it was accentuated with the demand that all of a sudden took place combined with the shortage of shipping lines and shipping containers and people picking crabs, whether it's in Indonesia, Philippines or India, it's a combined situation where everything came together in a perfect storm." 

Chairman Robert Newberry says it's a dry crab season in the Chesapeake Bay as most of the crabs are in the northern part of the bay right now, but that not enough locals want to pick crabs.  "I know there has been a problem with getting our H-2B workers in here to pick crabs, because of the COVID and all this other stuff, but with all do respect I think crabs are at a record high right now," Newberry says. "They're well over $300 a bushel coming out of the retail shop." O'Conor says he's paying double the price for blue crab meat to make his famous crab cakes, but even in a pinch he says he won't sacrifice the quality of his product. D'Angelo says supply chains should be back to normal by late summer or fall as people switch to other foods and the demand for shellfish goes back down. O'Conor says if the crab meat runs out, crab cakes might be off the menu for the rest of the season.