Taylor Shellfish Farms

About Taylor Shellfish Farms

Reviewed by Oyster Tasting Guide editorial team · June 2, 2026

Founded

Family farming since 1890 in southern Puget Sound

Headquarters

Shelton, Washington

Scale

Country's largest producer of farmed shellfish; owns and leases roughly 14,000 acres of tidelands in Washington

Species

Pacific, Kumamoto, Shigoku, and native Olympia oysters, plus clams, mussels, and geoduck

Cultivation

Beach (intertidal) culture, plus tumbled and suspended methods depending on the oyster

Integration

Vertically integrated, with its own hatcheries, farms, retail shops, and oyster bars

Certification

First U.S. bivalve farm to hold Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) certification (announced 2025–2026)

Taylor Shellfish Farms traces its beginnings to 1890, when the great-great-grandfather of the current owners began farming native Olympia oysters in the clean, bracing waters of Puget Sound's Totten Inlet. More than a century later, the Taylor family is still at it, and the company they built is now the largest producer of farmed shellfish in the United States, based in Shelton, Washington, with operations across Western Washington.

The scale of the operation is hard to overstate. Taylor owns and leases roughly 14,000 acres of tidelands in the state, including a large farm in Samish Bay, and the company produces enormous volumes of shellfish each year, tens of millions of live oysters along with mussels, clams, and geoduck. It is a vertically integrated business, running its own hatcheries, nurseries, and farms as well as retail outlets and a string of oyster bars, which lets it control quality from seed to plate and offer a consistent range year-round.

What sets Taylor apart on the half shell is the diversity of oysters it grows and the famous waters it grows them in. The company raises Pacific oysters, the small and deeply cupped Kumamoto, the tumbled Shigoku, and the tiny native Olympia, which has been part of the family's story from the very beginning. Totten Inlet in South Puget Sound is especially prized; the cold, productive water there has long been associated with rich, sweet, often cucumber-and-melon-tinged oysters, and the inlet has recovered ecologically over recent decades as a working shellfish estuary.

Farming methods vary by oyster and by beach. Many of Taylor's oysters are beach- or intertidal-grown, hardened by the daily rhythm of the tides, while others are tumbled in the surf to deepen their cups or grown in suspended gear. As self-sustaining filter feeders, the shellfish require no external feed or fertilizer and actively improve the water around them, a point the company emphasizes in its sustainability work. In 2025–2026 Taylor was recognized as the first U.S. bivalve farm to earn Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) certification, widely regarded as a gold standard for responsible aquaculture.

Across more than 130 years, Taylor Shellfish has grown from a single family's Olympia oyster beds into a Pacific Northwest institution and a benchmark for West Coast oysters. Whether it is a briny-sweet Totten Inlet Pacific, a buttery Kumamoto, a salty Shigoku, or a coppery little Olympia, a Taylor oyster carries both the merroir of Puget Sound and the accumulated craft of five generations of growers.