BATON ROUGE – The peak of crawfish season is still weeks away. Restaurant owners that do get their hands on the mudbugs are selling them fast, though.

“I’m selling out every day,” said the owner of Pit N Peel, Von Rayborn. “I’m going to the farm daily picking up as much as I can.”

Rayborn is selling 7 to 10 sacks of crawfish every day.

At Tony’s Seafood, crawfish is also selling out daily. The manager says they’re selling 20 to 30 sacks a day, which he considers a slow start.

“The cold snap really kind of knocked us back some, which increased the price a little bit but it’s going well,” said Rayborn. “My farmer is fully staffed now. They have all of their traps out so we should see an increase in the next few weeks or so.”

Many restaurant owners and farmers are hoping this crawfish season will be better than the last.

With COVID-19 restrictions in place, crawfish farmers took a hit.

“Several places where I provide services for had to basically trash 4,500 lbs. of crawfish because they couldn’t provide the services for them to be consumed,” said Rayborn.

To-go orders kept many in business, which Rayborn is relying on again this year.

“ We’re getting set up now so that we’re ready for any orders that can be placed,” said Rayborn. 

The price for a pound of boiled crawfish is $6.79 at Pit N Peel and $6.99 at Tony’s Seafood.

“The price is always based on the demand, and it’s going to be dependent on what is open and what is not open,” said Rayborn.

Rayborn expects prices to start going down in as early as a couple of weeks.