Now more than a decade old, ABSeafood continues to catch on. Based in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, the company’s tentacles stretch to Alabama’s Gulf Coast, where fresh and frozen seafood items are shipped throughout the South and lower Midwest, including Evansville and surrounding Tri-State communities.
Co-owner Barry Collier is a fisherman and native of the coastal region, while his wife is from Bardstown, Kentucky. “People wanted seafood whenever we came up to visit, and it turned into a business,” Collier says. “We built a wholesale route leading to (Kentucky), which we don’t do anymore. And when we got there, we opened a store.”
The restaurant, Gulf Coast Connection, remains in business in Elizabethtown. While the Colliers reside in the Mobile, Alabama, area, co-owner Ryne Vincent — a Gulf Coast native now living in Kentucky — handles many of ABSeafood’s deliveries. It was Vincent who pulled a white utility trailer into The Hills Church at 5025 Constellation Ave. on a spring Saturday morning, ready to unload delicacies for a line of seafood lovers.
If it swims in the Gulf, chances are ABSeafood can bring it to you. “We sell fresh cooked and live crawfish, fresh shrimp and oysters, and various fish and alligator meat,” Collier says, with soups and dips rounding out the menu. Lent is a popular season, but business doesn’t stop there: ABSeafood makes catches and deliveries all year long. Its schedule and specials are posted regularly to Facebook, where customers place orders by commenting on upcoming delivery dates.
Evansville is a name you’ll see often on those listings. The company started coming here in 2017, two years after its launch. “It used to be every other Saturday, and people were having to guess when we were coming,” Collier says. “So, we’ve made a point to come every weekend so people can plan their parties around it. … We’ve got a good loyal customer base there.”
Newburgh resident Laura Stoltz is among those loyalists. She makes flavor-packed gumbo using andouille sausage and shrimp, and at Mardi Gras, she paired it with a king cake order. She also cooks jambalaya and triggerfish chowder with ABSeafood deliveries. “I love the freshness of their seafood,” Stoltz says. “It brings the variety and options we enjoy while on vacation to us here at home.”
