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for too long, either, because then it goes to waste. There’s a real fine balance that you have to have in a crawfish business.” His grandfather was obviously an important mentor. “I’ve been doing this maybe six or seven years now, and those first few years he really helped me a lot. Some things I was hardheaded about — maybe I didn’t listen and I should have! But a lot of things, I listened to as much as I could, and he’s really guided me and helped me learn a lot of little details that I wouldn’t have known, and [that] could have been costly mistakes.” In the seafood business, he says, you’ve got to kind of be able to foresee a lot of things, and plan meticulously. As soon as you miss that sale, the customer is going to go to somebody else for their crawfish. That’s not even counting the slow seasons and how to navigate them. For Tony, the first few years of business were all about grinding and putting in the hours to get everything going. He certainly learned about a strong work ethic from his grandfather. “I worked with him after Katrina redoing houses, doing sports, selling seasoning — he definitely taught me about how to work hard and get stuff done. I don’t even realize, sometimes, just how ingrained those things are in me at this point.” Today, the two are talking about marketing, where the elder Scramuzza shined like few others in the city. And those wild commercials that helped define crawfish in New Orleans remain important to the Scramuzza family as well. “We still, every holiday, get together and watch the commercials on Thanksgiving or Christmas Day,” he said. “We get a great laugh at their creativity and how good my grandfather was.” There are lessons to be learned there for the young businessman. And one thing is for certain: Al Scramuzza’s imprint on New Orleans cuisine is for all time. Very pretty indeed.

Al Scramuzza and Donald Rouse at the Rouses Grand Opening in Gretna, LA in 2014.

Fate stepped in when he and his grand father were coaching together at the Johnny Bright Playground in Metairie about 10 years ago. Al coached everything — always had — and had continued doing so until he turned 90 (which is as good a time to stop as any). It was part of the community-minded ness of the Scramuzza family, and applied to everything from sports to crawfish boils to rebuilding houses after Katrina. “My grand father was always big on praying, and big on being positive,” said Tony. During this time, people kept pestering his grandfather to put out a crawfish boil seasoning, because the one they used at Seafood City literally defined the flavor of crawfish for a generation, and people were nostalgic for it. That is when the Scramuzza family started working with Rouses Markets. “When he decided to actually do it, I helped him with it,” said Tony. “It was a big deal when we got it into Rouses, and the product was really doing all right.” Seafood City’s boil seasoning had 14 ingredients in it, Tony told me, where most only have four or five and, unlike non-local seasoning, their boil didn’t pad their bags with salt, which after a certain point is just filler to make people feel like they bought

more than they actually did. The Seafood City boil leaned heavily on Italian herbs, representing the family’s roots and giving it a distinct profile. In the end, they decided against continuing the product, however. “My grandfather was getting close to 90 by then, and I was still kind of young and learning business,” said Tony. “Eventually we decided to get away from it, but the whole experience sparked my appetite for business.” Instead, Tony decided to get into the industry his grandfather established here so long ago. “I started peddling crawfish, and it just kind of took off from there,” he said. Today Scramuzza’s Seafood, whose storefront is on Idaho Avenue in Kenner, is the largest supplier of crawfish for Rouses Markets. Though his surname helped recognition of his company early on, crawfish is not an easy business to be in, said Tony. The competition is fierce. It takes a long time to build a group of reputable, reliable crawfish farmers and fishermen. Everything is perishable, and you’ve got to deal with a lot of weight and at a very fast pace. “You’ve got to have the product when people need it,” he said, “but you don’t want to sit around with a perishable product

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