We're Back (And We've Been Busy)

It's been a hot minute.

In our defence, we've had reasons; Disco Scallops is built by a group of engineers, scientists, marketeers and restaurateurs, all with day jobs. But also all with a shared conviction that scallop fishing can and should look very different to how it looks today. When you're trying to build a new fishery from scratch, the blog occasionally gets sacrificed at the altar of actually doing the thing.

But that changes now (we hope). We're committing to a minimum of one post a month — a genuine attempt to pull back the barnacle-covered veil on what we've been doing, thinking and building. Real updates, progress, talk from us and everything we're doing.

So. In the interest of catching you up, here's what we've been up to.

We won a BBC Good Food Award.

Dan Saladino documented the Disco Scallops story on BBC Radio 4's The Food Programme, and we found ourselves as finalists in the Food Innovation category — alongside two extraordinary brands, The Chocolarder in Cornwall and Agroforestry Research Trust in Devon. We are genuinely honoured to have been in that company. Three finalists. All from the South West. Turns out us country bumpkins are leading the way in food innovation for the rest of the country. We'll take it.

You can now eat Disco Scallops at Rockfish — and have them delivered to your door.

Pot-caught Disco Scallops are now on the menu across all Rockfish restaurants, plus a growing number of others. If you haven't tried them yet, head to your nearest Rockfish and fix that immediately. And if you'd rather not leave the sofa, you can order them for next-day home delivery. Fresh, pot-caught scallops. On your doorstep. Tomorrow. The future is genuinely fine.

Our fishermen network is growing.

We're working with brilliant fishermen across the South West and beyond — a growing collective of coastal potters who believe in the method and are seeing real results. Most are diversifying from crab and lobster potting, adding scallops as an additional, valuable catch. A couple are even scallop divers who've started using pots when visibility is poor — which, given the British winter we've just crawled out of, has been most of the time.

Hey Mum, we're on the tele.

Coastal Adventures on Channel 5 featured the Disco Scallops story — you can watch the piece here. And Matt Tebbutt gave us a shout-out on Saturday Kitchen, which we received with the appropriate level of undignified excitement.

We ran a Future of Scallop Potting workshop.

This one deserves its own blog post — and it'll get one. But the short version: we brought together fishermen, scientists, NGOs, policymakers, marketeers and restaurateurs. Everyone in one room, having honest conversations about the real barriers to making scallop potting viable at scale.

We set one rule at the start of the day: if it can't be done — if the barriers are genuinely insurmountable — we'll know by the end of the day.

The conversations were frank. The ambition was real. And the answer, by the end of the day, was unambiguous: yes, it's needed. Yes, it's wanted. And a plan is now underway. Watch this space.

We hosted Wholefood Warrior in Brixham.

We took nutritionist Eva through the full Disco Scallops story — from the science to the boat to the plate. You can watch her deep dive here.

Rachel has been spreading the Disco word at Disco Scallops dinners.

From a talk at Faber to an evening at Fortnum & Mason — where Disco Scallops were on the menu, cooked by chefs who knew exactly what to do with them — the story is reaching new rooms and new people. The appetite, if you'll forgive the pun, is very much there.

So yes. Busy doesn't quite cover it.

This is a new quarter, and we're treating it like a new resolution — which is absolutely a thing, regardless of what anyone says about January being the only acceptable time for self-improvement. More blogs. More updates. More pulling back the curtain on what it actually takes to build something new in an industry that's been doing things the same way for a very long time.

We're glad you're here. Stay with us — it's getting interesting.

Disco Scallops™ — pot-caught, light-lured, and built by people who genuinely believe the sea deserves better.