Nothing at all. Nothing needed saying. There’s an unspoken bond between Mom-N-Pops, regardless of industry, that says “Brother, I understand.”
It’s no secret that Papa Roux is a Mom-N-Pop that supports other Mom-N-Pops. Still, I wonder how many people really “get it”. What we do goes far beyond anti-corporate sentiments, far beyond an aversion to TPS reports and forms in triplicate. It’s a way of life, a good fight against a bad mentality, a constant struggle for survival in a world where the deck is not only stacked but placed out of reach of the one hand tied behind your back.
So it is that we choose to do business with other Mom-N-Pops as much as possible. Every morning we pick up a load of freshly baked French Bread from a tiny little bakery on the Eastside. We proudly and confidently tout the freshest French Bread for miles, which of course makes our Po-Boys easily the best sandwiches on the Eastside.
The big Korporate bread truck guy came in a few weeks ago, wanting to know why we don’t do business with him. “Maybe because your bread is laughable and you expect me to keep it for 3 days at a stretch. Possibly because you won’t care one lick about how my business is growing, except in that it means more sales for you. Certainly because when anyone besides you signs your paycheck you don’t have the slightest clue how much passion it takes to do this. Day after day after day. Now you’d better git. Your push-to-talk is beeping.”
We quite possibly take our Mom-N-Pop philosophy to the extreme. All of our seafood comes from 700 miles away, on the Gulf Coast. Actually, it’s 708 miles away to be exact. I know this because we’ve driven the route twice in the past three weeks to keep Shrimp Po-Boys flowing at The Roux. We’ve always bragged on how we have the freshest Gulf Shrimp in Indianapolis. It’s time to back up that claim with some details. I should warn you now, I get a little passionate about this. The entry I’m about to write might even offend a few people. That’s fine. If you’re offended by anything in this entry, you probably had it coming. 
Lately, Mama Roux and I (and all the kiddarouxs) have been blessed with opportunities to spend quality time with our shrimp trawling friends, the Zirlotts, down on the Gulf Coast in Alabama. For the past two years, we had been having fresh Gulf product shipped up weekly via FedEx. The problem (and blessing) with FedEx delivery is that as our business increases, the FedEx shipping charges grow to a sizeable bill. Three weeks ago, Mama looked at the numbers and realized we could drive down and pick up our shrimp for less than the cost of shipping. I’ll admit that it doesn’t hurt that it’s the Gulf Coast, and it’s God’s Bayou Country, with nearby Dauphin Island beaches. Papa was Born On The Bayou, and grew up along the Gulf Coast Beaches, so there really wasn’t any hesitation. Besides, we were out of shrimp at The Roux, and that’s never a good situation.
We arrived at the Zirlotts, and both expanded and shrunk our world in the same instant.
Shrunk it, obviously, because our tiny little restaurant, which had for two years enclosed us in a bubble with a four-mile radius, now included this magical warp zone that brought us to the Deep South. Suddenly, once a month or whenever we need to or feel like it, we wake up in Indy but fall asleep on the Gulf Coast. It’s a unique and wonderfully blessed feeling.
Expanded in that we only thought we knew what daily struggles were. Brother let me tell you, until you make a living in the fishing and shrimping industry, yours is a life of pampered frills and no worries. Trust me on this.
Every day we were there, we tried to catch the hustle and bustle of their day. Try as we might, we always ended up missing at least the first few hours. By the time we strolled out of bed at a leisurely 7 am, they were wrapping up the first stages of hauling/cooking/processing freshly caught crab and shrimp. Still, we managed to see at least some of the operation, and it’s an impressive one to be sure. Five to ten people, all of them fami… um I mean KINFOLK… working like a well-oiled machine to ensure that today’s Fresh Catch is kept as pristine as possible, from live in the shell to packed and chilled. It’s an amazing sight. We even have video of the more fascinating bits (we’ll post them soon hopefully), and believe me you need to watch in slow motion to even see what their skilled hands are doing!
A word or two about the operation down there: it’s clean. It’s very basic, but it’s very very clean. Every piece of their operation reminds you just how simple it all should be. You don’t need multi-million-dollar stainless steel facilities to get it right. All the equipment in the world is no substitute for a good work ethic, good habits and practices, and common sense. Let’s just say that you can feel really really good about the quality of the Zirlott Seafood (they call it Zeafood) we put on your plate. We sure feel good about it.
I wonder if the other Cajun places in Indy — or any seafood places in Indy for that matter — have ever inspected the facilities of their vendors? Buddy, you think we had a long trip at 708 miles… fancy a trip to China, anyone?
Which brings me to the main point of this entire entry: IMPORTED SEAFOOD.
Why do we tolerate it? Why on earth do we support it?
Our domestic economy is in the toilet, unemployment and welfare numbers are going through the roof, and at least one of our responses is “gosh isn’t that sad… oh well… anyone in the mood for frozen shrimp from china?”
I have so many stories to tell about why you should never ever support imported seafood ever again. I have Board of Health concerns, I have domestic economy concerns. I have quality and taste concerns. Stop in at The Roux sometime and I’ll give you an earful. But let me focus on just one issue here, which is the impact imported seafood has on my fami… err KINFOLK down on the Gulf Coast.
I’ve met most all of the core Zirlott family. They’re a beautiful and very close family. On any given day, at least one branch of the family pays a visit and hangs out, and generally sets to work with the family business. Often there’s several children and grandchildren that accidentally meet up at Victor Zirlott’s house (Vic is the Zirlott patriarch). On Sundays, it’s understood that a multi-generational gathering of at least 25 people will take place for worship, dinner, and recreation.
However, in our many visits there, there is one Zirlott we’ve not met. He’s always out shrimping. Sometimes off the coast of Texas, sometimes off the coast of Florida. Always putting his family’s needs above his own, and always doing whatever he can to keep an income flowing. There’s pictures of him on the walls at Vic’s house. Last Sunday, during dinner (we made full-loaf Po-Boys and Jambalaya for the Zirlott clan), his daughters were looking at the pictures, and one of them said “oh look, there’s Daddy.” It turns out they don’t see Daddy very often either, as he spends so much time trawling for shrimp, hauling in crabs, and catching much of the Zeafood that you enjoy in your Gumbo and on Po-Boys at The Roux.
And for what gain? Most processing plants to offer him a laughable rate on Fresh Gulf Shrimp, some days barely enough to cover the expense of spending a month out at sea (upwards of $30,000 in fuel alone for a month at sea!).
It wasn’t always this bad. Time was, a month at sea fed and clothed his family without any problem. What changed? People got greedy, got selfish, and stopped caring. It became far more important to have Crawfish Etouffee — in November — in Indiana — than to have believable and quality product only where it’s seasonally and regionally available. Fresh Gulf Shrimp in Indiana is available year-round (it’s a hassle, but it’s available). Fresh crawfish isn’t available in November anywhere, and yet somehow as a society we’ve come to expect it. And so we buy it, and ignore the fact that for every pound of pre-cooked, frozen, imported Chinese crawfish tail we buy, somewhere there’s a Daddy who has been out to sea for a month, and comes home to his children to explain that prices are so low this year that he’s got to turn around and go out again tomorrow just to keep the lights on.
So, yeah, I get passionate about it. I want people to think about what they do and how it affects families. I want people to stop and think about whether or not the purchase they are about to make will enable a family to buy one extra gallon of milk that week, or if it simply means that some guy at Corporate Headquarters is impressed with how much money is flooding in from store #8034 this month.
You see, the Zirlott’s fight is my fight. For every “imported seafood” battle they have, I have a similar battle with a Taco Hut or a Pizza Bell selling garbage at prices I can’t touch, and people passing up The Roux to stop and grab a 60g fat 1100 calorie lunch that they order by yelling at a tinny speaker before throwing $5 in a window and driving away shoveling themselves full of “happiness” on the way to the gym. So I’m going to fight for the Mom-N-Pops on this one. I’m fighting for common sense. I’m fighting for ethics. Whoever I support, if it’s a Mom-N-Pop, I’m fighting for my own family.
Oh and by the way, I am taking the Mom-N-Pop fight outside of the walls of The Roux. I didn’t mention above, but I have a buddy from high school in New Orleans, Vance Vaucresson, who makes the best and most authentic Cajun Sausage in the world. Vaucresson Sausage is hands-down the only name in New Orleans that screams authenticity and quality, and has for over 100 years. Every time I go to the Gulf Coast for seafood, Vance meets me in Mobile with a few hundred pounds of sausage, so I can make the best Sausage Po-Boys in the world for you folks. And for every issue the Zirlotts have with their business, Vance has one with his, just like we do with ours (Vance lost his family’s 100-year-old sausage factory in Hurricane Katrina, and is still in the process of rebuilding). So we stick together. We support each other. I’m now asking my customers and business friends to do the same.
And it’s working. A major Mom-N-Pop pizza restaurant on the Eastside is now changing suppliers, dropping the imported and non-authentic seafood and sausage products in favor of Zirlott and Vaucresson. I’ll supply them with hundreds of pounds of product each month, which in turn helps my Zirlott and Vaucresson extended KINFOLK, and helps you good people in Indianapolis experience quality product at more places than just at The Roux.
Tell your friends. Tell your favorite Mom-N-Pop businesses. Have them contact me for availability and pricing. My dream is to get so much of Indianapolis hooked on Zirlott and Vaucresson that they become household names here in Indy, just as they already are in their respective hometowns.
