It’s shaping up to be a banner softshell crab harvest in the Charleston area this year. But with restaurants shuttered and would-be eaters staying home to stop the spread of the coronavirus, softie sales across the Lowcountry are, well, soft.
“We’re like, negative on ’em,” said Mark Richardson, co-owner of Marvin’s Seafood on Dorchester Road in North Charleston.
Softshell season is much-anticipated event in the Holy City, an unofficial, crustacean-fueled rite of spring that turns diners throughout town crab crazy. In years past, softie superfans have traversed the city on crab crawls, eating as many of the succulent blue crabs as they can get their hands on.
This year, despite favorable conditions for a bumper harvest, the COVID-19 pandemic has robbed wholesalers of the vast majority of their vital retail market.
“We’re selling what we’re bringing in, but we said right from the beginning that we’re not going (to be able) to buy as many from the crabbers,” said Kim Livingston, who along with her husband Jeff Massey, runs Livingston’s Bulls Bay Seafood in McClellanville.
Each spring for more than two decades, the business has sold softshell crabs to restaurants in South Carolina and beyond, including many in the Charleston area.
“This has been the worst (year) for sure,” said Livingston.
Wholesale struggles
Without restaurant customers to buy softies by the bushel, companies that buy peelers, shed them in the tanks and sell the resultant softies have seen a slowdown.
“We sell to mostly restaurants, but this year that’s not true,” said Livingston. Though some of her accounts remain open, many do not; Bulls Bay has idled approximately half its shedder tanks as a result.
Her business remains open for retail, but those sales can’t make up for the night-in, night-out demand from area chefs.
Other suppliers tell a similar story. “Our wholesale department has just about closed,” said Ellie Berry, owner of Crosby’s Fish and Seafood on James Island. “That’s probably been the biggest change so far.”
Berry’s softshell operation is small, so she can keep a low volume of softshells on hand to sell to customers at her Folly Road seafood counter.
But for Richardson, whose North Charleston outfit sells most of its softshell crabs to restaurants, maintaining its larger shedding operation without wholesale customers is a losing proposition.
“We could sell a few to walk-in retail customers, but you’re not gonna sell enough to pay for this setup,” he said.
To-go sells well
But though there are fewer restaurant kitchens ordering softies, those operators that are still open say COVID-19 has not canceled Charleston’s appetite for the crabs entirely. Far from it.
“Quite honestly, we have been selling about the same amount over the course of the first week (of the season) as we normally do,” said Kevin Johnson, executive chef of The Grocery in downtown Charleston.
Edmund’s Oast Brewing Company sold 375 softies in six days last week, a 15 percent improvement over last year’s figures, according to Timmons Pettigrew, director of group operations for Edmund’s Oast.
“Circumstances are entirely different,” he told The Post and Courier, speculating on the explanation for the uptick in softie sales.
“We’re 100 percent to-go, the rest of our menu is much more limited than normal, and fewer places are open, period, so there (are) fewer places to get softshells,” Pettigrew said. Overall sales are “way down,” however.
Other to-go operations beyond the peninsula, including Dockery’s on Daniel Island and Rosebay, a catering business in West Ashley, reported strong softie sales as well.
“We sold all 72 softshells we purchased this past Saturday,” said Chad Elkins, Dockery’s creative director. Because the restaurant changed its point-of-sale system since last year, he was unable to make a historical comparison, noting that the restaurant’s executive chef didn’t remember selling nearly as many last year.
A taste of normal
Softie season in Charleston is special because it’s a deviation from the norm, a quickly fleeting fete of the Lowcountry’s bounty that’s always gone too soon.
Softshell crabs from Bulls Bay Seafood, sold at retail. Hanna Raskin/Staff
But this year, so much has changed due to the coronavirus pandemic that eating softshells offers a return to normalcy for addled Charlestonians, said Elkins. “There’s a literal nostalgic hunger for the things that remind us of times past.”
For Stephen Rosenberg, a Charleston area Realtor who grew up near the Chesapeake Bay, softie season is usually an opportunity to reconnect not only with previous Lowcountry eating experiences, but also his childhood.
“It’s the little things in life, right?” he said. Though he managed to secure himself a takeout softshell sandwich from The Grocery (“lyrical”; “lifted my spirits dramatically”) the virus forced him to scrap plans for a “weeklong tour-de-force” of softie-eating around town this year.
“It’s tragic,” he said.
At Bulls Bay, Livingston wasn’t ready to give up on the season yet. And she didn’t have time to wallow, either. During a brief phone interview with The Post and Courier, she was interrupted by a retail customer calling to see if she had softies.
“Can you hold on one second?” she said.
