Page 40 - South Mississippi Living - May, 2020

DINING
STOCKING PANTRIES
Local Restaurant Supplier Opens to the Public
THE LINES ARE LONG but Coast Foods is well organized and they move fast.
Tstory by Lori Beth Susman photos by Lori Beth Susman and courtesy of Coast Foods
he praise delivered in Facebook posts comes on a daily basis: “Thank you for all you’re doing to help community members obtain items we need during this di cult time to take care of our families.”
“Thanks for everything y’all are doing!” “Thank you so much for helping our community.”
These thank you messages, and so many more, have been coming onto the Coast Foods page ever since the restaurant supplier opened its doors and began serving the public in mid- March. The move to serve the community came after Coast Foods owners saw the need to help local residents as grocery store shelves began to empty.
The owners, who are also partners in the ownership of Gulf Coast Restaurant Group (think Half Shell Oyster House), include Kevin Fish, Bob Taylor, Rob He ner, Brian Raspberry and Mark McQueen, who is president of Coast Foods. Typically, the company sells oysters, seafood and a complete line of food and nonperishable items to local restaurants and casinos.
“Once the shelves in the grocery stores were empty, we started discussing it,” Fish said of the idea to open to the public. “Then it seemed they stayed perpetually empty, and we had all this food we weren’t using because the Half Shells and our other customers were operating to-go only at a fraction of their previous volume. We were trying to gure out what to do – furloughs, layo s, what was the best direction to go – then we started discussing this. It just seemed to make sense, provide people something they couldn’t nd elsewhere and keep our people employed at the same time.”
Opening to the public allowed Coast Foods to keep its 15 employees working as they ll orders of such goods as toilet paper, bread, eggs, hamburger and chicken that are emailed in one day and then delivered to cars in a streamlined drive-up
process the next. Fish said they copied procedures noted from fast food drive throughs to create their system of getting people through the line with minimal contact and time.
“There was de nitely a learning curve,” Fish said, “but after a couple of days, we had a system down that worked great.” Some of his restaurant managers and the company’s corporate administrative sta also came to the Seaway location to help.
Coast Foods is just one of several restaurant supply companies who have opened to the public. Fish, who gave credit to Coast Foods General Manager Austin McQueen for his tireless work during this time, said they will continue to provide this service as long as there is a need and people keep ordering.
40 | May 2020
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