Shelton, Washington, U.S.A.-based Taylor Shellfish has been whittled down to a barebones operation as the coronavirus pandemic continues to choke markets and batter the industry.
The company – a major producer of oysters along with clams, mussels, and geoducks – has been forced to scale back or lay off over two-thirds of its 700 employees.
Bill Dewey, the company’s head of public affairs, told SeafoodSource that Taylor had laid off 46 employees, while placing another 240 employees on standby. Workers on standby can collect unemployment and have a comeback date set eight weeks after their designation, but Dewey said two months might not be long enough.
“We’re kind of hoping for an extension on that eight-week timeframe. Some of these folks, their comeback date is 8 April, and we just don’t think we’ll be ready for them yet,” Dewey told SeafoodSource.
On top of that, Taylor has 188 employees on a shared work program, which reduces their hours and allows them to supplement their income with other jobs.
Taylor had already taken a hit last year with the political unrest in Hong Kong, a major shipping hub for the company. In January 2020, sales plummeted again when the coronavirus broke out in China, one of its primary international markets. Additionally, domestic sales of shellfish started to tail off earlier than other markets because of coronavirus fears.
“People stopped going out to eat here in Chinatowns around the country, so our domestic sales started to drop fairly early, too,” Dewey said.
As restaurants around the country shuttered, “our market evaporated, along with every other shellfish company in the country,” Dewey said
Taylor still has two retail stores open in rural Washington state for pick-up, both of which Dewey said are doing brisk business. Three of the company’s four Seattle-area restaurants shut down shortly before Washington Governor Jay Inslee announced a closure on all bars and restaurants, but its Capital Hill location in Seattle is open for curbside pick-up or delivery.
Dewey said clients like Costco are helping to keep some product moving, but he estimated offhand that the company is running at about 20 to 25 percent of its production previous to the outbreak, and that sales last week were about a quarter of what they would be normally.
To boost online sales, Taylor has a deal with UPS to ship free throughout Washington state and parts of Oregon and Idaho. Shipping to other parts of the country has been reduced from USD 40 to USD 30 (EUR 27 to EUR 36).
“It’s a challenge because shellfish are heavy and tend to be expensive to ship, but we ship at high enough volumes that we tend to be able to negotiate rates,” Dewey said.
Dewey added that he is working collaboratively with others in the fishing and aquaculture industry to advocate for relief money from the government while Taylor tries to keep its farms up and running, and ready to produce.
“We are maintaining our hatcheries and nurseries. Our seed production is still trending along, because if we don’t do that this will rapidly become a multiple-year impact,” Dewey said.
Dewey added that members of the Taylor family, who comprise most of the top executive positions at Taylor Shellfish, are working without pay, and some salaried managers have taken cuts in pay while others are on the standby program.
