NEDERLAND, Texas — Crawfish lovers have begun seeking deals on the popular delicacy to ensure that Easter-weekend traditions can carry on.
Store owners said multiple factors are causing their crawfish supply to run low. With supply low, prices had to rise.
Some mudbug lovers have reported paying up to $10 per pound for crawfish this season.
Kenny Mings is the owner of Touch and Cajun Café in Nederland. Mings said the recent price increase boils down to two factors, cool weather and inflation.
"We had some cool weather come in and once that weather [came] in people kind of shied away,” Mings said. “The price kind of [came] up a little bit."
Mings describes Easter weekend as the "Super Bowl” of crawfish sales, but he fears the upcoming weekend could be different.
"Usually, we sell 5,000 sacks of crawfish throughout the week,” Mings said. "We probably won't see 2,000 sacks if that. They are just not catching like they normally do."
Mings owns multiple crawfish farms in Louisiana, and said there was an abundance of crawfish at the beginning of 2022. However, crawfish sales do not begin to boom until spring, and the abundance has started to spread thin.
Due to rising fuel, bait and labor costs, the Nederland restaurant owner said he had to raise his prices.
"We're spending $20,000 a month pumping water just to be able to keep water in the fields and oxygen in the fields for the crawfish to live,” Mings said.
Boiling crawfish throughout Easter weekend is a tradition for some Southeast Texas families. Not wanting to not take part in that tradition, customers have begun seeking out deals on the delicacy.
"They have a special today,” Austin Toon, customer said. “It's like $5 a pound, so then we got 30 pounds. So we took advantage, and we have a good sized family, so it's feeding about 10 of us."
Mings believes it could take time before customers begin to see a decline in crawfish prices.
"A lot of customers tend to ask, 'Hey, when's it gonna be below $2 per pound,'" and we may not see those numbers this year,” Ming said.
Mings said the limited supply of crawfish has forced him to buy the mudbugs from other vendors in order to supply Touch of Cajun Café and other restaurants he sells to.