In Good Taste: Ramie Murray, Founder And CEO, Dibba Bay Oysters "Our production capacity has rocketed from a mere average of 20,000 oysters a month two years ago, to almost 200,000 per month today, with this expected to grow up and beyond 500,000 per month by early 2022."
By Aby Sam Thomas Edited by Aby Sam Thomas
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This article is a part of In Good Taste, a special feature built for the August 2021 issue of Entrepreneur Middle East showcasing 10 of the UAE's most promising homegrown food brands.
As the company behind the Dibba Bay Oysters brand, East Coast Shellfish LLC was officially established in 2016, but that doesn't really take into account the years of work done to lead up to this particular moment. As founder and CEO Ramie Murray points out, there was a lot of time spent in everything from securing the right environmental permits, to waiting for applications for ocean concessions to be approved, before the Middle East's first shellfish farm producing gourmet oysters came into being in the waters by the coastal town of Dibba in Fujairah, UAE.
But the hustle didn't end there- before Dibba Bay Oysters' first harvest hit the market in the second quarter of 2017, Murray remembers having to introduce the product in question to the UAE's F&B scene, which meant a number of face-to-face tastings and explanations to convince chefs to take a locally grown oyster seriously- after all, the norm at the time was for restaurants to import this kind of shellfish from abroad. "Thankfully, the quality of the product spoke for itself," Murray remembers. "So, it was just a matter of putting the hard yards in visiting as many restaurants as possible!" But this zeal showcased by Murray and his team ended up getting the better of them as well. "Very soon, the bottleneck became our limited production output," Murray explains. "And no, contrary to what everyone says, it is not a good problem to have! Try explaining to a chef who believes in your product and has printed your brand on his menu that you can't supply him for a few months, as you've sold out and are waiting for more oysters to grow… Not fun!"
Source: Dibba Bay Oysters
But despite such struggles and strife along the way, Murray and his team at Dibba Bay Oysters persevered, and in 2019, the company found itself backed by strong financial partners to enable its further growth- and the results speak for themselves. The very fact that diners can often be seen asking for Dibba Bay Oysters by name when they are out and about in the UAE is a sign of the brand's appeal, and its ubiquitous nature in restaurants around the country (and beyond) showcases its development and expansion as well. "Our production capacity has rocketed from a mere average of 20,000 oysters a month two years ago, to almost 200,000 per month today, with this expected to grow up and beyond 500,000 per month by early 2022," Murray reveals. "The really exciting part of our growth story is that we are now exporting over 50% of our production to lucrative and discerning markets such as Moscow and Hong Kong.
But Murray notes here that a large part of the credit for the success that Dibba Bay Oysters has seen in the exporting arm of its business has to go to its location in the UAE. "We have an amazing export advantage over most oyster producers globally, due to the fundamental advantages of being in the UAE," Murray explains. "We are able to farm our oysters in a pristine marine environment in Dibba, yet due to the incredible infrastructure we enjoy here, we can harvest in the morning, be at Dubai Airports (one of the world's largest fresh air transport hubs) by lunch time, and then be landed in the majority of the world's major capitals by the evening of the same day… I cannot overstate the importance of this when dealing with a high value live seafood product."
A drone view of the shellfish farm. Source: Dibba Bay Oysters
Closer to home, while Dibba Bay Oysters continues to supply restaurants with its products through trusted distributions partners in the UAE, the brand has also been experimenting with developing its own direct-to-consumer channels here. "We opened our first Oyster Box concept in Dubai's Umm Sequim 1 fishing harbor in early 2020, and following its success as a specialist farm-to-table oyster venue, we are now developing further locations within Dubai, Ras Al Khaimah, Fujairah, and Abu Dhabi," Murray says. "It has been really engaging to be able to interact with our consumers directly and share our brand story, and the feedback has been fantastic. There are so few genuine farm-to-table concepts here in the UAE where consumers can fully trust and enjoy consuming a product directly from the people that grew it."
And perhaps therein lies the key reason for Dibba Bay Oysters becoming the much-loved brand that it is today. "First and foremost, our oysters are really good," Murray says. "The local story is a big selling point and really important, but Dibba Bay Oysters are a world-class product that happens to be grown locally here in the UAE. We have excellent growing conditions for oysters on the east coast of the UAE, thanks to the ideal temperatures in the waters and the rich density of food that's available most of the year. Our oysters have an incredibly fast growth rate, needing only 7-9 months to reach adult size- European oysters, in comparison, can take up to 2-3 years to grow to market size, and you would only see growth rates peak in this way in the summer. We are really lucky that we have the combination of a locally sustainably grown product that is as good as, if not better than, anything that has been traditionally imported here."
A Dibba Bay Oyster Box. Source: Dibba Bay Oysters
That said, Murray admits that it's been quite a tortuous road to get Dibba Bay Oysters to its current standing- it definitely cannot have been easy to kickstart the growth of an entirely new species and farming method in a region with very limited projects in the aquaculture or agriculture domain. But do the returns outweigh the risks? The answer seems to be yes. "Dibba Bay Oysters has been, and continues to be, an incredible journey of challenges and accomplishments," Murray declares. "I guess that's what makes it so fun and rewarding."
Ramie Murray, founder, Dibba Bay Oysters. Source: Dibba Bay Oysters
Harvesting Success: Dibba Bay Oysters Founder Ramie Murray Shares His Tips For Wannabe Entrepreneurs Aiming To Follow His Lead
Do your research "Find out how big is the market for the product you are thinking about introducing [whether] locally, regionally, and internationally. Be very careful on your price data that you are basing your financial assumptions on- just because a restaurant sells something at a high price does not mean the producer is getting anything close to that."
Be clear on the rules "If you are planning on growing something completely new, make sure that the right regulation in place for this product locally, and also for export."
Being local isn't enough "If you choose to produce something locally, make sure it's as good as (or better than) and price competitive to what can be easily imported. Simply having something grown locally, but is not particularly good, is just not going to fly with the majority of consumers."
