It’s just about springtime and you know what that means: Crawfish season is upon us.
The mood could strike anywhere. Maybe you’re sitting at your desk at work. Maybe you’re chilling on the lake. Maybe you’re tired of seeing your friends’ perfect crawfish boil pics on the ‘gram and you’ve just got to get your hands on a couple of pounds.
Guess what, now there’s an app for that. Launched in 2017, the Crawfish App is a free download pointing you to the nearest places to take care of your cravings. It’ll track down vendors by location, boiled or live, price, and even the size of crawfish they have in stock.
The app was started by husband and wife team Ryan and Laney King.
“Back in 2013, Ryan and I used to boil a lot of crawfish,” Laney explained. “We were boiling almost every weekend, and he would call around to his ten favorite places to get crawfish. One day he said, ‘I can’t believe there isn’t an app for this,’ and I said ‘Hey, let’s make one!’
Four years later, the Crawfish App was launched, covering 1175 vendors across the country. Vendors are called every Thursday by the Crawfish App team, and prices are updated by Friday afternoon so that you can be ready for the weekend. There’s even an online system that allows vendors to update their prices daily if they want.
“Originally, it was a south Louisiana-based app,” Laney said. “Now, we go as far west as San Antonio, and as far east as Pensacola. Houston is a huge crawfish market, and we didn’t realize that when we started the app. There are ven a couple of outliers, like a few places in Nashville, one in New York, and one is Las Vegas.”
The best part is the review system in the app by actual users, so you can see what people in the community are saying. Who’s got the best crawfish? Who’s got the cheapest? 
“That feature was Ryan’s idea, it was really important to him,” Laney said. “Some people might have the lowest price, but it doesn’t mean that the crawfish are a good size or that they’re tasty. Let’s say your budget is the main concern, then sure, you go with the cheapest. There’s a lot of vendors where the price is a little higher, but they get 5-star reviews. So they’re getting a ton of business.”
The app is also free for people to use and businesses to participate in.
“We have heard so much positive feedback from vendors,” Laney said. “Some people have told us their business has tripled over the past two years.”
