Photo by Erin Nelson.
Karen and Dusty Scott, owners of the new Snapper Grabbers Land and Sea fish market location in Liberty Park.
Seafood is a family business for the Scotts.
Dusty Scott’s grandfather, Ed Scott, owned a fish market in Birmingham in the early 1950s called River Fish Market on Vanderbilt Road in north Birmingham. Dusty’s father, Kent, worked there and eventually took over at the store when Ed retired in the 1980s.
At 8 years old, Dusty also began working there on Saturdays and in the summer. Working there taught him a work ethic, something he carried with him as he got into the wholesale auto parts business, a job he held for 30 years.
Kent and Pam Scott eventually opened Snapper Grabbers Land and Sea on U.S. 31 in Vestavia Hills and have enjoyed success over the years. Now, Dusty and his wife, Karen, will soon open their own Snapper Grabbers restaurant in Liberty Park.
“Land and Sea will be a full-service seafood and meat market with a unique wine selection,” Dusty Scott said. “We want it to be one-stop shopping to prepare a gourmet meal.”
The restaurant specializes in Gulf seafood and locally sourced meats. It also will have the ability to steam shrimp and smoke meat in the restaurant, and there will also be a grab-and-go selection with salads, dips and condiments, all made in house.
“Of course, we will have my father’s ‘almost famous’ gumbo,” Scott said.
Liberty Park is the only place we would have considered doing this.
-Dusty Scott
Unlike the restaurant on U.S 31, the Liberty Park location will not have a café, Scott said.
While he had a successful career in auto parts, Scott said following in his family’s footsteps was something he knew he had to do.
“Seafood has been the family business my whole life,” Scott said. “When the opportunity arose to have my own store, I couldn’t pass that up.”
What makes the restaurant so special is that it is a multigenerational, family-owned and operated market, Scott said.
Dusty’s wife, Karen, has been supportive throughout the process of opening the restaurant, he said. High school sweethearts, the couple have been married for 30 years, have two daughters and are excited for the future together, he said. The couple reside in Trussville, where they’ve been for the past 20 years.
Opening a store in the middle of the pandemic hasn’t been easy, causing delays and a change to the original plan, Scott said.
“COVID-19 was really starting to take hold of the country when we started down this adventure,” Scott said. “It’s the main reason we couldn’t pull off the café part. COVID-19 affected everything we were trying to do and caused development and construction to take much longer than we expected. I really thought we would be open before Christmas.”
More recently, they hoped to be open by the end of May. The couple is excited to be a part of what Scott called a special community.
“Liberty Park is such a special community with a huge upside,” Scott said. “Liberty Park is the only place we would have considered doing this.”
The store will be at 8021 Liberty Parkway and can be found on Facebook at Snapper Grabbers Land and Sea Liberty Park.
