Today we’d like to introduce you to Kent Thomas.
Hi Kent, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My name is Kent Thomas, the owner of Tails from the Bayou, Houston’s first premier traveling Champagne and Oyster Bar. We specialize in breathtaking seafood towers loaded with top-quality seafood, including boiled shrimp, and a champagne and oyster bar with exotic oysters from around the world. Tails from the Bayou is a seafood lover’s paradise, offering something exquisite and unexpected. We can tailor the menu to your preference and liking by providing some of the freshest seafood from coast to coast.
The youngest of two, born into a working-class family and community, Kent Thomas entered the world on April 28, 1983, in Shreveport, Louisiana to David and Shirley Thomas. After graduating from Texas Southern University in 2012 with a Major in Fine Arts and a minor in Radio, Television, and Film, Kent has continued to express his creativity by pursuing a career as an educator with Fort Bend ISD as an art teacher and as an entrepreneur by starting a business named Tails from the Bayou.
Tails from the Bayou’s roots started over ten years ago as an annual event on Good Friday when I boiled crawfish for my family and friends in Lake Charles, Louisiana. The comments and feedback that I received motivated me to turn this hobby into something more serious. My family background is from North Louisiana, far away from the fresh seafood out of the Gulf Coast, but the seafood was always a staple in our household.
Shortly after graduating from TSU, I became an art teacher for a middle school in Houston Independent School District. During this moment in my life, I was settling into a career as an educator and getting a grip on life financially, but I was still living check-to-check. At that moment, a light bulb went off in my head: “Maybe I can sell plates at work for all the other teachers on campus that have busy lives outside the classroom.
They can enjoy a delicious meal prepared by me, and I can earn some extra income while doing this.” At a special Saturday school session, I asked teachers on campus if they would be interested in purchasing gumbo from me during their lunch break. The demand was there, so I gathered all of the ingredients for my gumbo from the local HEB a couple of days prior.
At this time, it was 2016, and I really wasn’t taking Tails from Bayou seriously. I was only doing one crawfish boil per year at our annual Good Friday event in Lake Charles or cooking shrimp and crab for my family in Shreveport, Louisiana. It wasn’t until the world shut down in the Spring of 2020 due to COVID-19 that I made it a topic of discussion that I wanted to take Tails from the Bayou seriously and started writing down my personal goals.
In October 2020, I partnered with a local daiquiri shop and I did my first pop-up. It was a success. I managed to keep my feet wet to really see how it was working with a small crowd of people who wanted some good ole seafood boiled on-site. Through my partnership at the daiquiri shop, I also gained new customers who still follow me to this day during pop-up events and they even bring new customers each time to try the food.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It has been a rough road as a first-generation entrepreneur without any mentorship or background in the food and beverage industry. I have made many mistakes and have gained knowledge from each one of them. I wouldn’t trade it to change the world because it has made me a wiser individual.
I have made the decision that I will be a lifelong learner and will be open to new things that life throws at me. I will use this knowledge within Tails from Bayou to remain competitive with the competition.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Tails from the Bayou specializes in Creole, French, and Cajun cuisine catering services, including seafood boils, pasta, fried seafood, and a mobile raw bar. Crawfish, shrimp, and crab boils are in peak season from late March through late June.
At peak season for crawfish, shrimp, and crab boil, Tails from the Bayou provides onsite boiling conveniently in the comfort of your backyard, business, or pop-up locations at different events around the Houston metro area. Seafood is packaged in styrofoam plates and crawfish are packaged in clear plastic poly bags at our onsite events.
Onsite customers that hire Tails from the Bayou have the option to provide coolers and scoopers of their own or rent coolers from Tails from the Bayou. All this information is added to the invoice which includes the use of fuel for travel, propane for our boilers, all cooking utensils for seafood preparation, industrial crawfish scoopers, prepping tables, water hose and clean up.
We also provide a long list of items such as traveling raw bar, onsite boiling, blackened shrimp or chicken alfredo pasta, shrimp creole, gum beaux, po’boys, fried seafood, crab fried rice, grilled blue and snow crabs for our clients to choose from to customize and tailor to their preferences and needs. We also take pride in our mobile champagne and oyster bar with the best quality of oysters money can buy from local farmers from the Gulf Coast, Pacific, and Atlantic Coast.
We are also well-known for our crawfish, shrimp, and crab boils. We have a taste like no one else when it comes to our seafood boils. We also offer a spectacular seafood tower loaded with fresh Maine lobster, Alaskan king crab legs, clam, mussels, knuckles, fresh colossal lump crab meat, and jumbo cocktail shrimp and crab claws. All items on the raw bar are tailored and customized to the customers’ needs and requests.
Tails from the Bayou is Houston’s newest premier mobile traveling raw bar with several events underneath our belts such as catering for NFL players such as William Jackson III and James Prince, the CEO of Rap-A-Lot Records. We also cater at weddings, corporate events, wine tastings, engagement parties, family reunions, art shows, and private events at the Rolls Royce dealership in Houston, Texas to name a few.
The advantage of having our business come to your event is that you pay for our experience and our expertise. Our clients pay for the setup and cleanup so they can entertain their guests and have a good seafood experience with no concerns. Tails from the Bayou also brings a knowledgeable staff who provides education and entertainment.
We’re always looking for the lessons that can be learned in any situation, including tragic ones like the Covid-19 crisis. Are there any lessons you’ve learned that you can share?
The COVID-19 crisis was a blessing in disguise for my family and me. My wife and I were able to connect with each other on a different level that included structured days with an itinerary on what we both will be doing each hour during the day. We both were in the shape physically, mentally, financially, and spiritually. We both shifted our primary careers to online and were both able to start our entrepreneurship journey and focus on the big picture.
So, overall, the crisis was devastating while the whole world had to switch over to the new norm, however, the time spent locked inside the house was overall a valuable lesson learned—that God’s plan is ultimately the best plan, all the time.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @tailsfromthebayou
- Facebook: @Tails from the Bayou, LLC
- Website: www.tailsfromthebayou.com
Image Credits
TFTB
