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ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Mr. Shrimp and his family from left to right: Keia’ly Thompson, Lawrence Thompson, Larry Thompson, Keionne

Thompson, and Kyron Sumler. Photo by Channing Candies.

THE MR. SHRIMP EXPERIENCE To get the word out, he started marketing his new shrimp business on Facebook and other social media platforms. The Super Bowl in 2020 was when things went supernova. During halftime, he boiled his shrimp live on Facebook as a way to get people to buy them, and comments started flooding in—people could not get over their color and how appetizing they appeared. So, Thompson started hand delivering boiled shrimp, in addition to raw—and he did so with a twist. He called it the Mr. Shrimp Experience. “If I came to your house with boiled shrimp, you had to taste it in front of me. I wanted the raw reaction—an on-the-spot review,” he says. The response was universal praise, and he asked people to write just what they had told him on the Mr. Shrimp Facebook page. Word of mouth grew, and soon people were asking specifically for the experience. Delivery was one thing, but how often does a business seem to really care what you

think? “The idea was getting them the food, but everybody was gravitating to the person- alized customer service,” says Thompson. People really got into it, raving about Mr. Shrimp on personal Facebook pages and groups such as Where Black NOLA Eats. “They were leaving long reviews—I’m talking reviews almost like a novel.” The burgeoning online Mr. Shrimp family started making requests: could he do sides? Could he do boiled potatoes that tasted like the shrimp? Yes he could! And after that success, people started asking if he could do corn? Yes he could! Can you do sausage? Can you do turkey necks? Yes and yes! In fact, the turkey neck became so popular that people started asking if he could only deliver that. “That wasn’t my thing,” he says, “because me being Mr. Shrimp, I’ve got to bring you some shrimp!” In April 2020, he got an email from Chef Marcus Jacobs at Marjie’s Grill on Broad Street in New Orleans. “He said, ‘I see you are delivering shrimp, but are you licensed to

deliver to a restaurant?’ I said, ‘You are the first person to ask me that! Yes, I am licensed to deliver to homes and restaurants.’” They set up a meeting, and Marjie’s became the first—but certainly not the last—restaurant to carry Mr. Shrimp’s shrimp. “I thank him every day,” says Thompson. “A lot of the restaurants I deliver to today are because of Marcus. They trust him, and they started trusting me.” A REVELATION A confluence of tragedy led to Mr. Shrimp seasoning. His wife, Keionne, was hospital- ized when she was 21 weeks pregnant. She gave birth at 23 weeks. They lost the first twin, a boy, but the second survived—“He’s a miracle,” says Thompson—and for five months and two days, the family remained in the newborn intensive care unit. The idea for Throw It in the Pot came to Thompson while staying at the hospital. One of his customers asked if Mr. Shrimp could

66 ROUSES NOVEMBER | DECEMBER 2021