Operations
Delivering Fresh
We strive to get our customers the freshest oysters possible. After traveling to many restaurants serving our product Mr. Padden realized the longer an oyster is out of the water the more the taste changes. An oyster eaten fresh out of the water has an amazing taste but a restaurant that served a five day old oyster had a different, not as fresh, flavor. So he made it a priority to shorten the window from farm to table as much as possible. We do this by wet storing our products from all harvest areas on a beach, in the water, that we can transfer the product from to a refrigerated to truck in under 15 minutes.
Wet Storage vs Tank Storage
In some states "wet storage" means storing in tanks in a building, but in Washington state using an actual waterway for storage is also required to be called wet storage. This is no different than harvesting the product straight from the beach. There is no tank or artificial components in this system, only the the natural water and environment where the shellfish are grown already. We move bulk amounts of shellfish to this beach weekly. Some restaurants think the wet store date on our tags mean it was harvested from a week ago and stored in a tank so they are hesitant to purchase, thinking they will get a week old product. This is not the case, as we are moving the product from the beach into refrigeration in minutes and usually shipping the same day of harvest, occasionally the next morning depending on the time of tides.
Harvesting, Processing, and Shipping
We harvest product for orders on Monday and Thursday. After harvest the next step is to transport the product to the facility to be processed. The product is cooled to proper temperatures during the one hour drive to the facility. From there we move the product into a refrigerated processing room where we check temperatures and quality, perform any sorting needed, and package the product. Any product not cooled to proper temperatures is rejected and returned to wet storage for two weeks. We prepare the product for shipping almost immediately. Product is never stored in tanks for future orders. We want to give our customers the freshest possible product so they can get it to the tables immediately to give consumers the freshest taste. Consumers are often getting our product within 2-3 days of harvest (beach storage). We deliver in Seatac at various freight forwarders for shipping to our customers by air and anything shipped by truck on the west coast departs the next day and is delivered to the customer on the third day of harvest.
Consumer Safety
We are FDA and DOH certified and trained in HACCP and Vibrio. We take the utmost precautions during all months of harvest by monitoring water conditions and temperatures. We are one of few companies that will shut down in the summer when water temperatures reach 68F for the first time of the summer. We do this as it's an indication that Vibrio is going to be growing rapidly in the waterway. As a business model, this is difficult because it's the peak selling months of the industry due to tourism and more people eating out in the summer. This hurts our sales and in the past some customers would not deal with us if we couldn't ship during these months. We deal with customers that understand the consumers health is more important than the profit margins made in these situations. We want our customers to care as much as we do and we currently have some of the best customers in the country.
Records and logs
Everything we do is to meet high quality standards in every regard from beginning to end of the shellfish process. Our invoices state the entire history of the oyster from the time it was bagged to the time it was shipped, including relevant temperatures and beach storage information. In the event of a problem our customers can reference the invoice for most information required by their health department. This is one extra step we take for transparency and simplicity for our customers. In addition we keep redundant and sometimes extensive logs of every harvest and transfer of shellfish that record the time, date, and temperatures of the shellfish, reefer or cooler, air, and water.
