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What is the White Boot Brigade
The White Boot Brigade is a traveling shrimpers road show, hell-bent on sustainable harvests, cultural preservation, and business innovation. Organized by marketumbrella.org at Loyola University New Orleans, this select group of commercial fishing families meet certain criteria reflecting the project's triple bottom-line: sustainability, cultural preservation, and business innovation.
For decades, the families who harvest these wild crustaceans have ridden the waves of a threatened domestic industry — global competition, high fuel costs, and a rigid post-harvesting regime. As a result, they have watched their livelihoods shrink. And this, at a time when consumer demand for shrimp has increased. Is there a role for this uniquely flavored, brackish water shrimp harvested in the in-land waters of the Louisiana Gulf Coast by small family fishing fleets? We think so. And we think that once you taste this unusual, wild product, you'll want to design your meals around the spring brown shimp and summer white shrimp seasons.
How do we get this product to you? Working with travel partners and underwriters, we stage seasonal campaigns to new markets: local, regional and global. The purpose of these campaigns is to connect producer to consumer, educate consumers about the unique flavor and texture of this wild delicacy, and to retool the commercial fishers to embrace boutique methods in harvest, post-harvest, and customer service stages of their business. White Boot Brigade campaigns are fun, experiential, and add value to all who participate — restaurants, markets, consumers and fishers alike. Partners like www.fedex.com have joined in and allow our shrimpers to be completely confident that their fresh caught wild Louisiana seafood will arrive at their shopper's door ready to prepare!
John Collins from FedEx, shows off their newly designed shipping boxes to San Francisco White Boot Brigade consumers during the 2007 West Coast White Boot Brigade campaign.
News
As Louisiana commercial fishers enter into winter 2008 tending to nets, fixing boats, and readying themselves for the next wave of predictably bad news likely to come on the commercial front, we thought it due time to share our lessons from the high seas of 21st century marketing. An idea that marched its way out of the farmers market movement, the White Boot Brigade provides commercial fishing families with a means to retool their businesses by forging direct links with restaurant chefs, consumers, and retailers who value freshness, quality, and ecological stewardship.
Louisiana shrimpers bring harvest, environmental message to California seafood lovers
A new grant program made possible through the Kellogg Foundation will provide funding to not only restart family commercial fishing affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita but also help these businesses to retool for changing markets.
