Jordan Barrus of Coco Shrimp
The Coco Shrimp guys — entrepreneurs Jordan Barrus and Isaac Hadley — are ready for the third chapter of their story.
Sales have tripled this year at their stationary food truck, in the parking lot of an Ace Hardware off of Basswood Boulevard in north Fort Worth, as customers opted for the sort of easy takeout that Coco Shrimp sells, Barrus said. Sales at their Near Southside restaurant, 318 Bryan Ave. in the South Main Village, did well after they opened it in December last year, dropped early on during COVID-19, and increased since June, Barrus said in an interview.
“We don’t have much to go on; we opened in December,” Barrus said, during what looked like a busy lunch hour Wednesday in the Bryan restaurant. “We really don’t know what the restaurant would have been capable of.”
Barrus and Hadley have enough to go on that they’re preparing to open their second brick-and-mortar location. Teased earlier this summer in an Instagram post, Barrus said he and Hadley have signed a lease for a 2,400-square-foot corner spot in a strip center at 2401 Heritage Trace Parkway in Fort Worth — five miles from the food truck. The restaurant will have a drive-through, Barrus said. The location will be significantly larger than the 1,400-square-foot Bryan location.
“The plans are with the city; we’re shooting at April or May” to open, Barrus said.
The two are discussing a potential brick-and-mortar site that would replace the food truck, and be close to the food truck’s location, Barrus said. “It’s just in the talks right now,” Barrus said.
They’re scouting potential locations. The food truck has outgrown itself, he said. Waits are lengthy for the popular once-a-month special — two plates and two beverages for $20 — the food truck offers on the 20th of each month, he said. “The wait times are horrible. We want to provide the best experience possible.”
The menu is uncomplicated, making it easier to manage. The restaurant offers five “flavors” of shrimp, with sides like rice, pineapple and avocado; a shrimp taco; and Bubbles, a popular Hawaiian mochi ice cream. The food comes boxed up and ready to go, which has helped significantly during COVID, Barrus said. “We didn’t have to re-invent our business model.”
Coco Shrimp has also significantly simplified its food preparation process since it opened the food truck.
“When we started [in the truck], you could only do one or two orders at a time; if you got 10 orders in, it’s an hour and a half,” Barrus said. “Everything now takes two to three minutes.”
The Coco Shrimp story is an unusual one. Barrus, a Californian from San Clemente, and Hadley, a Fort Worthian, met while attending college in Hawaii. Hadley worked as a prepper for a coconut shrimp truck. After college, Barrus, who majored in political science, ended up back in California with a job selling software to auto dealerships and spending time traveling away from his young family. “I hated it.”
Hadley, an exercise and sports science major, moved to Maine to work as a tennis pro, also with a young family. But he held onto the experience of working in a shrimp truck and decided to do it back in Fort Worth, plowing savings into a 1970s-model ambulance, converting it to a food truck, and launching the business in early 2016, using recipes he hatched. “I was kind of watching from afar,” Barrus said.
By that summer, Barrus decided to go into the shrimp business with Hadley and moved to Fort Worth with his family, joining up with the food truck in August 2016. They negotiated a $600-a-month rent for a stationary location with eight parking spaces in the Ace Hardware lot. They bought another food truck, secured reliable management, and started catering events. “Then we started thinking about a restaurant space, where we could just lock the doors and go home at night,” Barrus said.
Working with Fort Worth broker Amber Calhoun, they found the Bryan Avenue location, an old building in the still-sleepy South Main area, signed the lease in early 2018, and invested about $100,000 in buildout, out of cash flow and with help from their landlord. “We built the whole places ourselves,” Barrus said.
The food truck had built a popular following. “Within a year [of running events], we got a pretty good following. When we opened the restaurant, we already had people coming in.”
Like the food truck, Barrus and Hadley have brought in reliable management. Hadley is still the food guy. “I guess,” Barrus joked. In the beginning, “he literally was making stuff up. He’d judge whatever he was doing on customer feedback.”
The finish-out to the Bryan Avenue restaurant is decidedly rustic, Hawaiian, and surfer — Barrus and Hadley are surfers — with several surfboards hung from the ceiling. The new location will follow the motif.
With COVID, Barrus and Hadley installed Plexiglas dividers between booths and planters in the center of a long picnic table.
With its streamlined concept, Barrus and Hadley can see the potential to replicate Coco Shrimp in numerous locations. The two receive offers to buy the company and to sell franchises. They haven’t decided whether to proceed on franchising. As far as selling, Barrus said, “I feel we’re on the verge of something great. We want to stick it out for awhile longer.
