Western Oregon restaurant making trip to Eastern Oregon
Published 6:00 pm Tuesday, April 28, 2020
- Mo’s Chowder Vault manager Mike Marshall stirs a new batch of the restaurant’s famous clam chowder. The facility, which is located inside the Astoria Mo’s location, produces a few thousand pounds of the soup daily.
NEWPORT — For years, Mo’s Original Seafood and Chowder has helped schools and nonprofit organizations raise money by selling its clam chowder base as a fundraiser. Now, Mo’s is selling the base to keep its feet under it as the coronavirus wreaks havoc on the food service industry.
Mo’s presold beach bundles — clam chowder base, homemade bread, garlic cheese butter and mini-cobbler — began when the shelter-in-place order started March 16.
“We are just trying to pay some bills and stay open,” said Gabrielle McEntee-Wilson, Mo’s co-owner and vice president of public relations. “This is just an offshoot of fundraising Mo’s usually does with sports teams and others, but on a bigger scale.”
The presale, fueled by a significant word-of-mouth campaign, including La Grande’s Jessica Hall Baun, saw Mo’s sell 1,500 quarts of chowder base, 250 loaves of bread, 300 12-ounce portions of butter and 250 mini-cobblers. All of the food is being made at the Newport location.
“People didn’t have to buy a whole bundle and could just buy the chowder if they wanted to,” said McEntee-Wilson.
Now McEntee-Wilson, who owns the Original Mo’s in Newport and Mo’s West in Otter Rock at the Devil’s Punchbowl, with her mother, Cindy McEntee, and brother, Dylan McEntee, will be making the trip across Oregon to drop off the bundles, that have been sold out. It begins April 30 with stops in Boardman, Pendleton and La Grande. That will be followed by trips to Baker City and Ontario on May 1. People will be able to pick up their orders at that time.
“We reach out to each town and $1 of every bundle goes to a cause they choose with most picking a food bank,” McEntee-Wilson said. “We will make another trip, but we don’t know when that will be.”
Mo’s not only has sold bundles in Oregon, but Utah as well. It speaks to people wanting a little taste of the coast when they can’t travel.
“We are just so honored by how much people care about our success and are buying chowder because it has been hard,” McEntee-Wilson said. “We have so much gratitude for our customers.”
