SCRANTON, Pa. — At Cooper's Seafood House in Scranton, owner Jack Cooper is getting creative with the menu. Certain items, like lobster and crab, are virtually impossible to buy right now. So he's making do with what he can get and re-printing his menu every two days.
"I couldn't get catfish out of Louisiana. We used to buy that from a certain purveyor. So now, I have salmon, so instead of blackened catfish etouffee, I put on blackened salmon etouffee. So, we play around with things like that," said Cooper.
He showed us his supply of clams. On Tuesday, he got a delivery of three bags. Normally, he'd get 50 at a time.
"Or, for instance, lobster tails, we used to buy 2,000 pounds a month out of Florida. Now, we're on ration. We get 10 percent of that, 200 pounds."
It's not just restaurants dealing with the problem; grocery stores are also having trouble keeping their seafood cases stocked.
"King crab leg, we'd normally have two sizes of king crab in our case right here, can't get either one. And if we were able to get it, then our cost would be 30-40 percent higher than it was last time we purchased them," said Mark Bradigan, director of operations at Gerrity's Supermarket.
Bradigan and Cooper say it's not necessarily an issue of supply and demand with seafood but with workers.
"What we're being told is, there is product available, but there's challenges with labor overseas, getting the product. There's challenges with transportation," said Bradigan.
"Mainly, there's a big trucking problem, there's not enough truckers out there to get the product here, a lot of people, like our clam diggers are not working on weekends, so they're not producing as much," said Cooper.
Both Cooper and Bradigan say the problem doesn't seem to be letting up.
And as Gerrity's already begins preparing for the holiday season, the worry is that the problem won't be over once the Christmas shoppers arrive.