How Snoopy’s Restaurant Opened | Ernie Buttler #fishing #fish #truestory

I was harvesting the shrimp at night and running them over during the day, and one of the other shrimpers turned me on.He said, hey, this building's abandoned.The guy wants out.They'd make a good shrimp house down there.I was gonna sell retail fish and shrimp.So I went and talked to the owner, and they had it boarded up.

I said, what do you want for it?He said, well, I need $75 ,000.I said, well, I ain't got that kind of money.He said, I trust you on a handshake.We did it on a handshake.I paid him in seven years.

I told my wife, I said, I was gonna start selling raw product.Remember I said we had 200 pound limit?I come in that one morning with 2 ,300 pounds.I was a little bit over the limit, and I hauled ass into Snoopy's.Had all them shrimp out there, ice down.I started bringing them in, and the market was a dollar a pound.

It went to 35 cents a pound, like that.I went, I ain't giving my shrimp away for 35 cents a damn pound.So I had a cooker back there, you know, like a turkey cooker.

I had an old damn tub from a house.porcelain tub on a old makeshift pier on the back of that building with that screw all falling apart.And I told my wife, I said, I'm gonna start boiling these goddamn shrimp.I'm gonna sell them.You can't make this up.I took a chunk of plywood, put it back in my old pickup truck, and painted on it, all you can eat, three bucks, shrimp.

Parked it at the base of the bridge, all them people going to the island.Come back up and I started boiling shrimp, seasoned them up, boiled them all, you know, started boiling them, ice them in that tub.Here come people in.Started serving them.We didn't have hardly anything inside.Next thing I know, about an hour went by, and I can't keep up.

I look out there, and they got cops directing traffic down there.I went, son of a bitch.So after it was all said and cleared, we sold all 2 ,300 pounds, and I had a stack of money like that.And I went around and gave everybody that helped a bonus.I still had probably $5 ,000, $6 ,000 left.And I went, we're going in the restaurant business.