Harley and John's Seafood owner Grant Logue is a man in demand.
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A new side business called The Oyster Experience is making him so busy that on Thursday he was in the Fairy Meadow seafood shop before dawn before the day ended at a Meet the Designers fashion event in The Strand Arcade.
Walking around shucking oysters for people at events started by chance for Mr Logue but demand is so high it has recently become a side business for Harley and John's Seafood.
"What we do is go to different events and shuck oysters," he said.
"We have special belts that allow us to roam around the guests and interact with them. We also do oyster education. We get oysters from different rivers and do a talk on the oysters, how they are grown, what makes them taste different and the flavor profiles to expect".
Mr Logue said he had even done it as part of a wine wine tasting night and is getting plenty of interest from wedding and corporate event organisers.
The very first experience was when Harley and Johns Seafood was invited to shuck oysters at a Mercedes Benz corporate event in Wollongong three years ago.
As word-of-mouth has spread so has the number of oyster shuckers Mr Logue needs for events like Thursday night at The Strand Arcade.
"There are five of us up in Sydney doing this tonight. It just gets busier and busier and bigger every job," he said.
"We have four on this week. We haven't advertised but we just keep getting these jobs. So we thought it was time we made it official and have now launched The Oyster Experience".
Mr Logue said it is building up to the point where he will have a dedicated oyster shucking team he sends out to events.
"We use Australia's Oyster Coast for all our oysters," he said.
"The company was started in 2015 by oyster farmers so we have access to 60 farmers out of 11 estuaries on the NSW coast".
Mr Logue views what The Oyster Experience does as educational.
"We really want to try and showcase what an oyster should be and change people's perceptions on what oysters are," he said.
"So many people say they don't like oysters but when we finally convince them to try one they can't get enough".
The most common question he gets while he walks around with his special oyster belt shucking oysters for people is "where are they from". But people also want to know how the farmers grow them.
Mr Logue was very popular at a Wollongong Golf Club event he attended on Wednesday night.
Among those he interacted with was Mark Finlay who described what he was doing as a fantastic idea.
"He is getting out and pushing oysters which need to be showcased. It is good to see a young bloke getting and being really entrepreneurial. I love the way he is getting out and doing it".
Mr Finlay's son is an oyster farmer who runs a business called Oyster Life in Batemans Bay. So he knows how important it is to educate people.
Mr Logue said he does that in different ways.
"At Para Restaurant in Thirroul we recently did an oyster education night," he said.
"We had oysters from four different estuaries and did it similar to a wine tasting event. By trying oysters from four different rives people could actually taste the difference from each one. We have a few more coming up. We run them in conjunction with wine tasting as well".
"What the oyster tasting nights are about is educating people about what an oyster should taste like. You should get your sweetness and your saltiness out of the water and your creaminess from the conditions. Especially that mineralisation at the end of the oyster.
"I can see the potential of the interest in this is which is why I am starting to push it".
Mr Logue said he spoke to people in the shop as well. But walking around with his special oyster belt interacting with people it was a different environment and experience.
He is finding it very rewarding and good cross promoting for the seafood shop.
"People at a Wollongong Golf Club event on Wednesday night were asking me where they could get the oysters they were tasting. I told them I own Harley and John's and if they go there they can get the same oysters".
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