Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast.
Speaker 2: I'm Tracy Alloway and I'm Joe Wisenthal. Joe, as you know,
Speaker 2: although you sometimes forget.
Speaker 3: You love fish. If there's one thing I know about you, Tracy,
Speaker 3: you love fish. You love seafood. Right, right, that's where
Speaker 3: you were going.
Speaker 2: Right, That's exactly it, all right. Famously, some people, some
Speaker 2: long term Odd Lots listeners, will have heard this story before.
Speaker 2: But the first time Joe ever invited me over to
Speaker 2: his house, he asked if I had any dietary restrictions,
Speaker 2: and I said something like, you know, like I eat everything,
Speaker 2: but I'm not a big fish person. And then I
Speaker 2: went over to his house and was promptly served pok bowls. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that all right, They're actually really good. And I do
Speaker 2: eat fish on occasion. I'm just not that big into it.
Speaker 2: Like I eat crabcakes oysters. I just have to be
Speaker 2: in the right mood for I guess I get it.
Speaker 2: One thing I have never eaten, though, is sardines.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I've had sardines. I like them. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: don't know if I have like a strike.
Speaker 2: Do you just like take them out of the can
Speaker 2: and just stick them in your mouth, Like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I have her, Like I'll put them
Speaker 3: in like a salad or something like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, yeah, salad sardines.
Speaker 3: But I've definitely taken sardines and just like taking one
Speaker 3: out of a canon eating it for sure.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, I personally don't eat fish, don't eat a
Speaker 2: lot of fish because of the taste. But it turns
Speaker 2: out it's becoming a pretty convenient distaste to have because
Speaker 2: we are now facing a sardine shortage.
Speaker 3: When we talk about tinned fish, it intersects with a
Speaker 3: bunch of interesting things that we talk about all the
Speaker 3: time or that come up. So it's like global supply
Speaker 3: chains generally. I think, you know, I've said this a
Speaker 3: couple of times on the podcast, but one factoid that
Speaker 3: I very remember from our trip to Alaska is how
Speaker 3: much fish is caught off the shores of Alaska. It's
Speaker 3: sold in the United States, but first it takes a
Speaker 3: detour to China for us.
Speaker 2: That's right, So even if you buy us caught Alaskan salmon,
Speaker 2: the chances are it's probably been processed through China.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I find that to be really interesting. I find the
Speaker 3: sort of marketing of fish and the sort of branding,
Speaker 3: because one thing that we know about tinfish, especially over
Speaker 3: the last five years, is there's a whole like new
Speaker 3: demographic that doesn't just associate it with like the cheap
Speaker 3: sun kissed or star kissed tuna or whatever that brand was.
Speaker 3: Either the sort of low end tuna that's sort of emerged,
Speaker 3: this like high end premium version of cantuna, which I
Speaker 3: really like cantuna that's emerged. So there are all these
Speaker 3: sort of like different market things not to and then
Speaker 3: you mentioned climate and some of the questions about you know,
Speaker 3: supply and fish stocks, et cetera. There are many different
Speaker 3: intersecting stories of the canned fish story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the big news right now is the Morocco,
Speaker 2: which apparently exports something like fifty percent of the world's
Speaker 2: sardines supply, has imposed a ban on sardine exports because
Speaker 2: of again sighting reports overfishing. Apparently there's not enough plankton
Speaker 2: either to feed the little sardines, which is sad because
Speaker 2: it means that penguins also don't Penguins not in Morocco, yeah,
Speaker 2: but penguins elsewhere in the world also don't have enough
Speaker 2: to eat. So we're going to talk about all these things.
Speaker 2: We're going to talk about what's actually going on with
Speaker 2: the world sardine supply, where sardines come from, where fish
Speaker 2: in general comes from, how it gets processed, what makes
Speaker 2: a good tinned fish versus a bad tin fish. And
Speaker 2: I'm happy to say we do, in fact have the
Speaker 2: perfect guest. We're going to be speaking with Becca Milstein.
Speaker 2: She is the founder and CEO of fish Wife, which
Speaker 2: of course specializes in exactly that tinfish. And Becca, thank
Speaker 2: you so much for coming on oud. Lots I have
Speaker 2: to say, when I finally eat my first sardine, I
Speaker 2: think it will be a Fishwife sardine.
Speaker 4: You can't wait for that day. Tracy, I truly can't
Speaker 4: thank you so much for.
Speaker 2: Having packaging has got me. The packaging got me.
Speaker 4: It's very good grating. It was definitely a big focus
Speaker 4: when I started working on the brand. You got to
Speaker 4: kind of do a bait and switch. There are a
Speaker 4: lot of people out there.
Speaker 2: Like, are there going to be a fish punch in
Speaker 2: this conversation?
Speaker 4: As money as you'll allow, but yeah, we had to
Speaker 4: really counter position from what Americans associated with canfish, which,
Speaker 4: as you probably know, was you know, white and blue
Speaker 4: super commodity, non branded canfish. So obviously what the hard
Speaker 4: left all hand illustrated, super beautiful branding. And we still
Speaker 4: have our illustrator, you know, all on staff creating you
Speaker 4: illustrations for us every single day.
Speaker 2: So tell us about the origins of Fishwife. Then you
Speaker 2: just touched on it there. But the I was to
Speaker 2: kind of make a premium tin fish product that would
Speaker 2: maybe make Americans think a little bit more like in Europe, right,
Speaker 2: and tin sardines are like a nice thing to have.
Speaker 2: I remember my mom getting very excited on your present.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So I'm from New Amshure. Originally I studied abroad
Speaker 4: in southern Spain and college in a city called Granada.
Speaker 4: And Granada is a very interesting city. Beautiful. Have you
Speaker 4: been there?
Speaker 2: I have. Yeah, I've had some of the best timona
Speaker 2: of my life in Granada and cheese.
Speaker 4: They really know how to do it. The interesting thing
Speaker 4: about Granada is that, to my knowledge, it is still
Speaker 4: the only city in Spain that serves free top us
Speaker 4: with every drink. So if you get like a little
Speaker 4: glass of beer, a little glass of wine, they will
Speaker 4: bring you out, whether it's you know, on the very
Speaker 4: low end, potato trips, on the very high end like
Speaker 4: sardines all heimone, You're just always being fed beautiful little bites.
Speaker 4: And I was super inspired experiencing that and just seeing
Speaker 4: how delicious these little snacks were. You know, they're super simple,
Speaker 4: no cooking involved, but the ingredients were of such a
Speaker 4: high quality that it just tasted so so get no
Speaker 4: matter really what little bar I was at. So between
Speaker 4: that and seeing the way that Spaniards eat and you know,
Speaker 4: really just treasure the high quality of their food products,
Speaker 4: and then traveling to Portugal, which is like where everyone
Speaker 4: has their conservative experience, and it's certainly where I had
Speaker 4: mine in Lisbon, you know, seeing these beautiful shops with
Speaker 4: rows and rows of gorgeous tinfish, like it could not
Speaker 4: have been more different than my market basket in southern
Speaker 4: New Hampshire. And I at the time, certainly, you know,
Speaker 4: at age twenty, wasn't like I'm going to do this
Speaker 4: for the rest of my life. But during the COVID
Speaker 4: nineteen pandemic, I started getting more candy fish. It's really
Speaker 4: really good for you. It's ready to eat straight out
Speaker 4: at the tin it's still stable, you know, when we
Speaker 4: were all trying to not go to the grocery store
Speaker 4: as much as possible, and there was sort of a
Speaker 4: light bulb moment, you know, seeing I know you had
Speaker 4: an Alson Roman on this podcast, seeing folks like Alson Roman,
Speaker 4: Anthony Boor Dane and David Chang, like they had all
Speaker 4: been espousing how incredible, especially you know, really high quality entry.
Speaker 4: It was overally high quality Cantuna. It was definitely in
Speaker 4: the ether, and I was starting to see in my
Speaker 4: own pure group, you know, people posting pictures of like
Speaker 4: little meals they were creating at home with tinfish, which
Speaker 4: is fascinating because I really feel like before COVID that
Speaker 4: was not an habitual thing for people to do, like
Speaker 4: make a beautiful lunch and post about it on Instagram.
Speaker 4: So weird. And obviously now it's completely eb equitiz So
Speaker 4: all of those factors combined added with the bump. I
Speaker 4: think the canfish category saw like a ten percent year
Speaker 4: ear increase during the COVID nineteen pandemic, which is crazy.
Speaker 4: It has not been like that since broadly, and I
Speaker 4: was like America to deserve a better product than I
Speaker 4: think they'll be willing to pay for it. So that
Speaker 4: was that was really the origin of the company.
Speaker 3: So there's sort of like two different strains that I'm
Speaker 3: interested in this conversation. I want to make sure you
Speaker 3: touch on both. So that's sort of the brand origin.
Speaker 3: We'll talk more about brand and marketing now. Tell us
Speaker 3: like and we'll get into more, but give us the
Speaker 3: basic supply chain that you have right now of you know,
Speaker 3: the short version of like where a fish is caught
Speaker 3: and the steps it takes until I get it in
Speaker 3: my kitchen like that, give us like the bait the
Speaker 3: overall statement.
Speaker 4: I'll give you the most simple, straightforward version first, which
Speaker 4: is because the thing that you'll learn throughout this conversation
Speaker 4: is that every seafood supply chain and can seafood supply
Speaker 4: chain is completely different and very strange. So the first
Speaker 4: I'll give an example of is our cantabrin antrobies. So
Speaker 4: we source our anthrothies from a tiny town in northern
Speaker 4: Spain called Santonia. And if you go to this town, Santonia,
Speaker 4: you will be blown away because it is completely occupied
Speaker 4: by anchoby canneries. Like that is the town. You walk
Speaker 4: through this tiny city and it's like every anchoke, candy,
Speaker 4: anchoby brand you've ever heard of, their logo like plastered
Speaker 4: on a big warehouse. So in that case, the fishermen
Speaker 4: are going out like six miles from shore. They're using
Speaker 4: the persine method of fishing, which is it basically is
Speaker 4: like a big bag wide net that's cast out into
Speaker 4: the top sort of the top of the ocean. It
Speaker 4: encircles the school of fish, and then the net is
Speaker 4: sort of pulled together and the fish are brought out
Speaker 4: of the water and then immediately put on ice, and
Speaker 4: then they're brought, you know, six miles into shore, and
Speaker 4: they're taken to the anchovy auction and they are marked
Speaker 4: with a number that indicates the quality of the anchovy.
Speaker 4: So that's like the size of the anchovy, has it
Speaker 4: been damaged, the fattiness of the anchovy. It's marked with
Speaker 4: that quality signifier, and then the bids begin. In this case,
Speaker 4: the there's usually one or two folks from each canary.
Speaker 4: And keep in mind these canaries are by and large,
Speaker 4: maybe all multi generational, family owned. So the canary that
Speaker 4: we work with was started in the nineteen forties by
Speaker 4: a man who now has had three generation of offspring
Speaker 4: that have taken over his business and you know, have
Speaker 4: grown and expanded his business. So anyway, today the grandson
Speaker 4: of this man goes to the anchoby auction and you will,
Speaker 4: you know, have a price in mind to bid on
Speaker 4: these anchobies, and he'll go by a bunch of anchoviies
Speaker 4: and those anthobies will be taken mirror three blocks away
Speaker 4: from where that auction is happening, and they'll be immediately processed,
Speaker 4: which in this case means, I mean I'm going deep
Speaker 4: in the processing.
Speaker 3: That's great, that's great.
Speaker 4: So that means that the anchobies will be basically headed
Speaker 4: and tailed, So their heads will be clipped, their tails
Speaker 4: will be clipped, and then they will be put into
Speaker 4: a barrel of rock salt in layers and they'll be
Speaker 4: left there for anywhere between twelve to thirty six months.
Speaker 4: And actually the longer they're in there, the higher quality
Speaker 4: they are. That being said, three years is a very
Speaker 4: very very long time. So it's a really really expensive
Speaker 4: product and a pretty limited market. Our anchovies are on
Speaker 4: average held in there from twelve to eighteen months, and
Speaker 4: during that time, you know, they they're cured and they
Speaker 4: develop all that beautiful flavor that we associate with anchovies,
Speaker 4: and then I'm going to keep going. At the end
Speaker 4: of that twelve to eighteen month period, they're removed from
Speaker 4: that bucket of rock salt and they are their skin
Speaker 4: is removed and basically, like the beautiful little pink anchovy
Speaker 4: that we all know and love emerges from what other
Speaker 4: miise looks like a pretty normal little silver fish. Like honestly,
Speaker 4: when you see an anchovy for the first time, like
Speaker 4: a lot of people think they're sardines because they are
Speaker 4: these like substantial long silver fish. They are cleaned. That
Speaker 4: lovely little pink anchovy is removed and then laid one
Speaker 4: at a time in the tin that you you know
Speaker 4: you see when you buy a fish anchovy product. They're
Speaker 4: cleaned extensively, They're rinsed and washed, and then they are
Speaker 4: those cancer are filled with extra original olive oil in
Speaker 4: our case, and they're seamed, and then anchovies are very
Speaker 4: unique because, unlike the rest of our tinfish products, they
Speaker 4: are cured through that salt curing method, so they're not
Speaker 4: actually heat treated, which makes them a dramatically more sensitive
Speaker 4: product and a much shorter shelf life product than the
Speaker 4: rest of our tin. So the rest of our tins
Speaker 4: have an average OA between a five to seven year
Speaker 4: shelf life, which I think you can imagine is like
Speaker 4: truly incredible to have as a food business owner. Like,
Speaker 4: they're very very few products with that sholve life. Anchobies
Speaker 4: only have about a year long self life because that's
Speaker 4: all care and method and they can't be exposed to
Speaker 4: keep because they'll disintegrate. So that's like the simplest supply chain.
Speaker 4: And how concentrated is that being said? Anchobies as an
Speaker 4: actual product or by far far and aware, our most
Speaker 4: complex to store and manage and ship.
Speaker 2: So you didn't have any prior fish experience before you
Speaker 2: started this company, right, I.
Speaker 4: Did not know. I had been in the working world
Speaker 4: for about four years in the entertainment industry before starting
Speaker 4: the business.
Speaker 2: So listening to describe the fish supply chain in a
Speaker 2: place like Spain, it sounds very familial and sort of
Speaker 2: close knit and probably hard to break into. Like I
Speaker 2: imagine you can't just go and find a fisherman and
Speaker 2: be like, hey, you want to be our supplier. How
Speaker 2: did you actually manage to source these particular people and
Speaker 2: start building up those relationships?
Speaker 4: That's sort of the interesting crux of this story is
Speaker 4: in CpG, and you know, in emerging brands CpG, it's
Speaker 4: very well known that quote unquote getting line time or
Speaker 4: getting a coman co manufacturer to work with you is
Speaker 4: very challenging because you know, who knows if you're going
Speaker 4: to be around in a couple of years. Your product
Speaker 4: probably has a bunch of weird like better for you
Speaker 4: ingredients that the commands don't want to deal with. They
Speaker 4: would much rather work with much much bigger companies that
Speaker 4: they can rely on to produce massive batchels or whatever
Speaker 4: product you're working on. This case is a bit interesting
Speaker 4: because when I started the business, I was reaching out
Speaker 4: to you know, mostly co manufacturer suppliers, et cetera in America,
Speaker 4: and first and foremost everyone was like, why are you
Speaker 4: trying to start a canned fish business? Like the canned
Speaker 4: fish industry is declining, Why don't you do pouches? The
Speaker 4: pouch industry is booming? And I was like, that's really
Speaker 4: not the vibe I'm going for, Gus. Honestly, it doesn't
Speaker 4: capture the European romantic esthetic. So that was definitely at play.
Speaker 4: It wasn't like trying to think of another industry. I
Speaker 4: don't know, beverage. Beverage is always you know, kind of
Speaker 4: going up into the right. It wasn't like I had
Speaker 4: a bunch of other young entrepreneurs that I was competing
Speaker 4: with for this line time, and it wasn't like the
Speaker 4: category was off like a shot. It was it was
Speaker 4: flat or in decline. So I think when we reached
Speaker 4: out to these European canneries, which I started doing, you know,
Speaker 4: started with the American manufacturers I coul get in touch with,
Speaker 4: and then very quickly start reaching out to manufacturers in
Speaker 4: Spain Portual. There is this you know, America, it's the
Speaker 4: biggest market in the world. Establishing a market in a
Speaker 4: foreign country is you know, near to impossible because of
Speaker 4: all of the marketing and brand building work you have
Speaker 4: to do. That being said, it's this incredibly attractive market.
Speaker 4: There's you know, very very affluent, really high paying customers.
Speaker 4: So I think when we reached out to these canaries,
Speaker 4: they must have seen that, they must have seen, Okay,
Speaker 4: here is you know, someone who's going to work really
Speaker 4: hard to try to build a market for this really
Speaker 4: premium product in America, and we don't then have to
Speaker 4: go do that work because again nearly impossible to accomplish,
Speaker 4: and we have a capacity like these these canories that
Speaker 4: they are mostly not operating at you know, three shifts
Speaker 4: a day, seven days a week. Maybe they're operating at
Speaker 4: you know, one or two shifts a day for five
Speaker 4: days a week. So there was some capacity at all
Speaker 4: of these canaries that we reached out to. I think
Speaker 4: the crazy part for them is seeing how quickly an
Speaker 4: American business can grow because you know, as mentioned, these
Speaker 4: businesses have been around for generations. They're family owned, they're
Speaker 4: not venture backed, they're not looking to you know, scale
Speaker 4: in a few years and exit like a that we
Speaker 4: think about business in the US is just so different
Speaker 4: from how these businesses are are you know, conceiving of
Speaker 4: their own Like if they have five percent year over
Speaker 4: year growth, it's amazing flat, it's fine in some cases.
Speaker 4: I don't want to generalize, but like they're certainly not
Speaker 4: trying to grow too much or fifty percent yearly year.
Speaker 4: So I think, you know, Fishwife has been around for
Speaker 4: five and a half years now. The demand has been
Speaker 4: revealed for these products, and I think watching these partners,
Speaker 4: they maybe have been fine with five percent year over
Speaker 4: year growth and seeing Fishwife's you know, volume requests triple,
Speaker 4: quadruple year over year, it's like hard for them to
Speaker 4: wrap their heads around.
Speaker 3: So I take it you had a few different structural
Speaker 3: opportunities because Okay, at that point, the sort of like
Speaker 3: premium cans were not really a category yet. The existing
Speaker 3: canneries actually did have some slack, so there wasn't an
Speaker 3: intense competition to get in there, but just sort of
Speaker 3: like basically, how did you, for just from a business
Speaker 3: wise perspective, solved that. It's still have a cold start problem.
Speaker 3: You have like no customers on day one, et cetera.
Speaker 3: You have to like get some capacity. You don't really
Speaker 3: know what en demand is going to look like. I
Speaker 3: guess you, as they say in the startup world, like
Speaker 3: the zero to one question, even if it was a
Speaker 3: little easier than maybe other DTC categories, what was the
Speaker 3: actual process of going to like I've got to place
Speaker 3: an order and sell it and like the commitments that
Speaker 3: you had to make to place that order.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a great question. So our zero to one
Speaker 4: year was twenty twenty one, and it had a distinct
Speaker 4: supply chain from the one that we have today. For
Speaker 4: the most part. So, as I mentioned, when I started
Speaker 4: working on the business, I was looking and open to
Speaker 4: build a supply chain both in North America and in Europe.
Speaker 4: So in the first year of the business, I started
Speaker 4: working with. The first canary we ever worked with was
Speaker 4: a tiny micro cannery in Oregon, on the coast of Oregon.
Speaker 4: This is mostly servicing sports fishermen from you know, the
Speaker 4: West coast, whether in California up to Washington. So like,
Speaker 4: we're not talking mqu's here. This is people coming in
Speaker 4: bringing their catch and saying, hey, make me you know,
Speaker 4: five hundred cans of tuna. So that was the first canary.
Speaker 4: Then we started working with one in Washington State which
Speaker 4: was very similar profile micro cannery superhands on, no MQ
Speaker 4: and to be honest, stand for minimum order quantity.
Speaker 3: Oh great, thank you.
Speaker 4: So so yeah, speaking to the issues I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 4: a huge issue that startups face is, you know, I
Speaker 4: want to start a beverage company, you need to make
Speaker 4: fifty thousand units of your sparkling water grand you know,
Speaker 4: on your first round before you have any demand, before
Speaker 4: anyone knows who the heck you are. So all in all,
Speaker 4: we didn't have an MQ issue. We certainly didn't have
Speaker 4: it in the domestic canaries because they are so so small.
Speaker 4: And then when we started working with our first canary
Speaker 4: in Spain, which we still work with today. We still
Speaker 4: work with the cannery in Washington State that MQ is
Speaker 4: still on this smaller side. I think it was maybe
Speaker 4: twenty thousand units, I think so. I think I ordered
Speaker 4: twenty thousand units of our startings with Preserve Love and
Speaker 4: it lasted us maybe the entire year. But it was
Speaker 4: super messy, like I had no idea what I was doing,
Speaker 4: I mean, demand planning. It was probably the worst thing
Speaker 4: I am at in the entire company. So we, like
Speaker 4: in the Oregon Cannery, we went out of stock unexpectedly.
Speaker 4: We were out of stock of two products for three months.
Speaker 4: Like that is what the zero to one year looked like.
Speaker 4: It stop starts, et cetera. But all the while, even
Speaker 4: with those stops and starts, and even with that very
Speaker 4: small amount of inventory, I was really able to build
Speaker 4: the brand that year. Like we still got a lot
Speaker 4: of press coverage, we still got a lot of influencer coverage,
Speaker 4: and you know, was able to build the bread. Even
Speaker 4: though the supply chain has since transformed significantly.
Speaker 2: Well, that was gonna be my my next question. So
Speaker 2: as your business has scaled up, and you know from
Speaker 2: the numbers you were suggesting earlier, it sounds like it's
Speaker 2: grown very very quickly. Has securing product become easier for you?
Speaker 4: It's become easier and harder. Hece become easier because now
Speaker 4: you know, we have eighteen employees at the company and
Speaker 4: it's they're a lot better it's hearing product than I
Speaker 4: was by myself. So that part of internal resourcing has
Speaker 4: become a lot easier. And then you know, we did
Speaker 4: this big supply chain transformation in twenty twenty three. We
Speaker 4: were really looking to go from that supply chain V
Speaker 4: one that I described to to supply chain V two
Speaker 4: that you know, the goal was the supply chain V
Speaker 4: two could see us through essentially unlimited scale in the
Speaker 4: American market. So we were looking for canaries that could
Speaker 4: produce eighty million cans a year one hundred million cans
Speaker 4: a year. So that was a transformation we went through,
Speaker 4: and by and large, we have been able to scale
Speaker 4: enormously and very very quickly. You know, in the in
Speaker 4: the grand scheme of things that being said, like I
Speaker 4: think the startine situation is a really good example. We
Speaker 4: have seen our demand for that product go. Those are
Speaker 4: really essentially exponentially and that unpredictable demand that we are
Speaker 4: sometimes faced with, which we can go into in a minute.
Speaker 4: What if we want to take into the starting situation
Speaker 4: that is when we're presented with just challenges because those
Speaker 4: things can happened so quickly, and this is not a
Speaker 4: super fast lead time supply chain, Like we're trying to
Speaker 4: tell our cannonies what we need a year ahead and
Speaker 4: six months ahead and three months ahead placing the po
Speaker 4: so they can really secure the raw material that we
Speaker 4: need to produce the product that we need. So I
Speaker 4: think that's that's the tricky part of being a high
Speaker 4: growth brand in a long lead industry. Yeah, you just
Speaker 4: never know what the growth is going to look like
Speaker 4: in a year.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm glad you we got to the sardine part
Speaker 3: because there was one thing that I wanted I meant
Speaker 3: to say in the intro. One other thing that piqued
Speaker 3: my interest in this whole story is that on Instagram,
Speaker 3: so I have a really messed up Instagram feed and algorithm.
Speaker 3: On Instagram, I get served a lot of b to
Speaker 3: b ads for Chinese sardine manufacturing facilities, who on the
Speaker 3: ad itself say, are you dealing with the Moroccan sardine shortage?
Speaker 3: Source your can sardines from China, et cetera. Which I
Speaker 3: thought it was like really fascinating to me talk about.
Speaker 3: So you're like getting to like, okay, you eighty one
Speaker 3: hundred million units. You know, up until again five years ago,
Speaker 3: this was not a high growth category. Ie. For years
Speaker 3: and years you have the emergence of these very inexpensive
Speaker 3: canaries in China, but also I believe Vietnam and Thailand
Speaker 3: and elsewhere. Prior to companies like you entering the market,
Speaker 3: was there sort of this shrinking of the industrial capacity
Speaker 3: in the types of places that you want to source
Speaker 3: from in say Europe or maybe you know, parts of
Speaker 3: the US that was shrinking due to this sort of
Speaker 3: global de industrialization phenomenon. And has that contributed to today now
Speaker 3: that it is a high growth category, or at least
Speaker 3: for you, it's a category that they're you know, that's constricted,
Speaker 3: that it's constrained because of the sort of years of
Speaker 3: like hollowing out from global competition.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I think it's the same stories as
Speaker 4: like all American manufacturing stories, there were ones booming canaries
Speaker 4: on either coast of the US and California probably read
Speaker 4: Canary Row or in on the coast of Maine. There
Speaker 4: were these bigger, more industrial canaries and a combination of
Speaker 4: factors contributed to those shutting down. Basically like most canories
Speaker 4: in the US shutdown like fifteen years ago. Today there
Speaker 4: are this is an estimate, but I would say like
Speaker 4: five ish in the lower forty eight and then probably
Speaker 4: several more in Alaska. Alaska is where you'd find some
Speaker 4: of the bigger, more industrial canaries that are doing like
Speaker 4: Commodity Alaska and kan Salmon, et cetera. But yeah, I
Speaker 4: think do a combination of factors. I know that there
Speaker 4: were really stringent FDA rules were put in place about
Speaker 4: fifteen years ago that a lot of the canaries in
Speaker 4: the US couldn't upkeep, couldn't manage. Some of the fisheries
Speaker 4: really declined, so the Pacific sardine and anchovy fisheries there
Speaker 4: have been moments of real decline on both the East
Speaker 4: and West coast. And with the decline of those fisheries
Speaker 4: and the shutting down of those fisheries, the canaries followed
Speaker 4: because obviously and then having this very cheap processing available
Speaker 4: in various parts of Asia, so much of the processing
Speaker 4: moved over there, like you were saying, with the Alaskan
Speaker 4: processing that you see in China. So it's a it's
Speaker 4: a common story and it definitely is is what happened
Speaker 4: in the US.
Speaker 2: Sorry, just to be clear. The Moroccan sardine situation, it's
Speaker 2: not that you can't can sardines and Morocco. It's that's
Speaker 2: where the sardines themselves are caught and then exported to
Speaker 2: the canning places in It seems mostly Spain and maybe Portugal,
Speaker 2: is that right?
Speaker 4: That is that is correct there? There are certainly canaries
Speaker 4: and cannery infrastructure in Moroccan go, but so much of
Speaker 4: the of the raw material from the Moroccan sardine fishery
Speaker 4: was being exported to Spain. I think it was like
Speaker 4: ninety percent of the raw material in Spanish canneries of
Speaker 4: sardines was coming from Morocco. So no, they have the
Speaker 4: canning infrastructure, and I think what we're seeing here is
Speaker 4: that they are preserving the raw material for their own
Speaker 4: exports because the ban is just on frozen sardine exports,
Speaker 4: not canned sardine exports. So Morocco is protecting his raw
Speaker 4: material and is able to maintain its industry. It's very meaningful,
Speaker 4: large industry of exporting cancardines.
Speaker 2: So has that affected fish Wife personally, I guess.
Speaker 4: It has, but not in the ways you would necessarily
Speaker 4: suspect because we have never sourced from the Moroccan sardine fishery.
Speaker 4: We have been sourcing from the Corner sardine fishery for
Speaker 4: about five years. That at the time that we started, Cornish,
Speaker 4: so Cornish England, it was the only MSc Marine Stewardship
Speaker 4: Council certified sustainable fishery in Europe at the time. Then
Speaker 4: MSCs is the most globally recognized certifying body for wild
Speaker 4: fisheries and it's the one that Fishwife goes by. So
Speaker 4: we were sourcing from this Cornish sardine fishery, and then
Speaker 4: the Iberian sardine fishery was actually MSc certified I believe
Speaker 4: last year, and so we started sourcing from that fishery
Speaker 4: as well. Just really exciting. So we're sourcing from these
Speaker 4: two MSc certified fisheries. Now the only certified sustainable fish
Speaker 4: sardin fisheries in Europe, so we weren't affected in terms
Speaker 4: of our raw material supply being impacted. That being said,
Speaker 4: with you know, so much inventory disappearing from the market.
Speaker 4: We saw our sardine sales starting and I would say
Speaker 4: December of last year like start to go coohoo bananas.
Speaker 4: I think it was kind of first two to three
Speaker 4: x the velocities that we had been seeing before, and
Speaker 4: it has sustained and gone even up to you know,
Speaker 4: four or five x, which is massive. So you know,
Speaker 4: getting calls from buyers that our retailers saying, hey, like
Speaker 4: my sardine shelf was completely wiped out, can you step
Speaker 4: up and step in and supplies with sardines? And you know,
Speaker 4: I remember having this conversation with my with my head
Speaker 4: of sales. It was like, we can do it. We're
Speaker 4: gonna have to air freight the product in order to
Speaker 4: get it there in time. You know, we usually try
Speaker 4: to send things by quote unquote slow ship, which is
Speaker 4: the most economical also the most environmentally sustainable, And you know,
Speaker 4: we had to make the hard decision of like okay,
Speaker 4: are we okay with our gross margin being compressed by
Speaker 4: these airship mens. As you can imagine, they are extremely expensive.
Speaker 4: In order to capture the demand maybe introduce new customers
Speaker 4: to fishwife sardines. We did make that choice many many
Speaker 4: times over for many retailers, and it's just been so
Speaker 4: much demand for the sardines that we just haven't seen
Speaker 4: go down. I think the crazy thing is we also
Speaker 4: saw this huge trend around sardines also kicking up at
Speaker 4: the same pot.
Speaker 2: So I was going to say, in the course of
Speaker 2: my due diligence for this podcast, I went on the
Speaker 2: can sardines subreddit, very active subreddit, and there were a
Speaker 2: few people complaining about they couldn't find sardines, that they're
Speaker 2: like local Trader Joe's or anything like that. And there
Speaker 2: were a bunch of posts also extolling the health benefits
Speaker 2: of sardines and making me think that maybe I need
Speaker 2: to try them.
Speaker 3: No, I think just from a health perspective, canned fish
Speaker 3: is just like a great way to get so protein.
Speaker 3: I put it in salads. I'll like put can tuna
Speaker 3: in a salad or something like that. I'm a big
Speaker 3: I'm a big I'm a big advocate. First of all,
Speaker 3: I find it interesting that actually people evidently are they
Speaker 3: want already and so bad they're willing to like trade up,
Speaker 3: so like some like market goes away and then they'll
Speaker 3: like go to the premium. But I want to talk
Speaker 3: a little bit more about like, you know, when I
Speaker 3: think of the DTC brands that truly like grew up
Speaker 3: in the age of like the golden age of Instagram,
Speaker 3: like the twenty tens, you know, it seemed like the
Speaker 3: big opportunity was find a product that's very expensive. Let's
Speaker 3: say like a Warby Parker. You know, you don't really
Speaker 3: need to pay three hundred and fifty dollars for a
Speaker 3: pair of Luxodica glasses. We could build this for twenty dollars.
Speaker 3: We'll spend ten dollars on advertising, and then we'll sell
Speaker 3: the product for one hundred dollars. I'll just make up
Speaker 3: these numbers and then we make seventy dollars in profit.
Speaker 3: And it feels like there are just tons of companies
Speaker 3: and they came out of business school and stuff like that,
Speaker 3: and they all identified all of these opportunities to find
Speaker 3: something that was premium and then like make a commodified version,
Speaker 3: cut out the middleman, do some good brand, and make
Speaker 3: it a little glossy, put it on Instagram, et cetera.
Speaker 3: It feel like this is the kind of the exact
Speaker 3: opposite where you have to invent a new category that
Speaker 3: doesn't really exist. Is this in part just like a
Speaker 3: function of like the changing I'm interested like the media marketplace,
Speaker 3: such as that playbook, Like now, if you started the
Speaker 3: warby Parker, rather than paying twenty dollars for the Instagram ad,
Speaker 3: you'd pay seventy nine and left with a dollar margin
Speaker 3: or something like that, and that you actually have to
Speaker 3: like do something totally different in order to build a
Speaker 3: DTC brand in the twenty twenties.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, to be clear, d t C makes
Speaker 4: up about twenty percent of our business, so it is
Speaker 4: it is our minority channel for us, right, even though
Speaker 4: it is incredibly incredibly important for fishwafe. But it's certainly
Speaker 4: not the business that we're like building our economics around.
Speaker 4: You know, food businesses you're gonna build in retail, like
Speaker 4: that is where the volume is. That being said, I think,
Speaker 4: I mean doesn't totally answer your question, but like people
Speaker 4: want really quality products and people are willing to pay
Speaker 4: for them. I think that's what we've seen. I think
Speaker 4: it's some crazy stat like fifty percent of the spending
Speaker 4: right now is being done by like, I don't know,
Speaker 4: like five percent of our populations something crazy like that.
Speaker 4: People are just willing to pay for a much higher
Speaker 4: quality product. First of all, I think a lot of
Speaker 4: us were honestly burned with some of those d TWOC
Speaker 4: brands where they're touting themselves as a lower cost but
Speaker 4: equally high quality version as the like sort of traditional
Speaker 4: like whatever, Lake Crusay, whatever, you know, and maybe that
Speaker 4: didn't turn out to be the case for a lot
Speaker 4: of them. I know, I bought a bedframe from one
Speaker 4: of these companies, and by god, I was worse eight
Speaker 4: hundred dollars I respect.
Speaker 3: Can I just make a plug for a brand? Though,
Speaker 3: I just like they did something good and so I
Speaker 3: just feel like, like ten or eleven years ago, we
Speaker 3: bought an away suitcase and it like started breaking down
Speaker 3: recently and the zipper broke. They replaced it for free,
Speaker 3: and so like, even I it was years old, so
Speaker 3: it's like a pretty like I think it was probably
Speaker 3: a marginally less quality product than whatever the incumbent suitcase
Speaker 3: company was at the time, but they but I was
Speaker 3: pretty surprised they actually replaced a broken suitcase.
Speaker 4: I'm right there with you. I've fown three away suitcases
Speaker 4: and they're amazing. There's exceptions to the rule every time,
Speaker 4: and I think with fish Wife, it's like, no, we're
Speaker 4: selling a super equality product made by multi generational European
Speaker 4: family owned caneries. Like it just is as good as
Speaker 4: it should be and needs to be, and we're not
Speaker 4: like doing any high falutin new age stuff. I'm attracted
Speaker 4: to that. I think other people are attracted to that,
Speaker 4: just knowing like this truly is the just the highest
Speaker 4: quality product. We're not. We're not cutting corners here to
Speaker 4: make a cheaper, cheaper product.
Speaker 2: Joe, you should make a way pay for their advertising.
Speaker 3: So it was such a free giveaway, but all right it.
Speaker 2: Did happen oway okay, away from personal brand preferences and
Speaker 2: just going back to the sardines for a second. So
Speaker 2: there are a bunch of different like themes that I
Speaker 2: are keywords that I hear here. So one is more
Speaker 2: demand for sardines. Sardines are having a moment. The other
Speaker 2: one is climate change, and we talked about the shortage
Speaker 2: of plankton due to potentially warmer waters. We've also been
Speaker 2: hearing about overfishing for ages and ages and ages, and
Speaker 2: you often see these competing headlines where you know, people
Speaker 2: say the world's fish population is in danger, and then
Speaker 2: two months later it's like, oh no, we figured out
Speaker 2: more sustainable ways of fishing and this demand or the
Speaker 2: supply is resilient and all of that. When you look
Speaker 2: at the sardines shortage, which of those factors matters the
Speaker 2: most to you in you know, the current moment.
Speaker 4: I think as a headline, the frustrating thing about seafood
Speaker 4: sustainability is that it is endlessly nuanced and it's changing constantly.
Speaker 4: So even with the sardine, the Moroccan sardine situation, they
Speaker 4: started to see a decline in the catch in twenty
Speaker 4: twenty three, it was about it was down about forty
Speaker 4: six percent. That's only three years ago. Like fisheries, science
Speaker 4: moves somewhat slowly. Doing assessments of fisheries takes a really
Speaker 4: long time. So TLDR, everything that's being talked about, all
Speaker 4: of the theories that you mentioned, Tracy, are just that
Speaker 4: their theories, and they're also like contributing factors to you know,
Speaker 4: a much bigger picture that probably all of them are contributing,
Speaker 4: not a single one, and it's hard to tell to
Speaker 4: what degree you's just contributing. So I'll like speak to
Speaker 4: these these theories that are that are currently in the conversation. Sure,
Speaker 4: so the first that seems most likely is climate change generally,
Speaker 4: so there are warming waters in the mid Atlantic that
Speaker 4: forage fish like sardines, like anchovies, like mackerel are very
Speaker 4: very sensitive to water changes, so when the water temperature changes,
Speaker 4: they are likely to migrate to colder waters. So it
Speaker 4: might not even be that there are less sardines. It
Speaker 4: might simply be that the sardines have migrated somewhere that
Speaker 4: the commercial fishermen have a lot of difficulty accessing. It
Speaker 4: could be deeper in the water, it could be further
Speaker 4: in the water. They're just they're in a new location
Speaker 4: and it's not where where the fishermen are used to catching,
Speaker 4: So that seems to be the most likely theory. Warmer
Speaker 4: waters can also trigger like unexpected changes in the food web. Obviously,
Speaker 4: everything in the ocean is connected, and when you know
Speaker 4: water temperature changes, it can mean also they are more
Speaker 4: predators that are actively catching fishing fishing in the area. So,
Speaker 4: like you said, and trazy. Humans are not the only
Speaker 4: ones that are catching sardines, so are dona and other fish,
Speaker 4: so there might just be more active predators in the area.
Speaker 4: There's also the plankton theory, which I think a lot
Speaker 4: of people are writing about, which is that the warmer
Speaker 4: water has triggered maybe less or less nutrient dense, fatty
Speaker 4: caloric hate.
Speaker 5: A skinny plankton, I absolutely hate when you get served
Speaker 5: on those, but those can lead to you know, leaner,
Speaker 5: less fatty sardines, which are the ones that folks who
Speaker 5: are looking to catch.
Speaker 4: So they are all these factors in combination definitely all
Speaker 4: tied up in climate change. Hard to know which is
Speaker 4: contributing the most. I think one thing, it's interesting this circumstances.
Speaker 4: From what I can tell, like overfishing is not not
Speaker 4: the main culprit. So I mentioned MSc earlier. That is,
Speaker 4: you know, the certifying body that we most lean on
Speaker 4: and look to, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch at
Speaker 4: a mouthful. They're also a very globally respected certifying body
Speaker 4: and they're the ones that have given I think this
Speaker 4: fishery currently has a yellow rating, which is not bad,
Speaker 4: but basically in their assessment is that the fishery is
Speaker 4: being well regulated, strong enforcement is in place, which leads
Speaker 4: me to believe that it's less of an overfishing and
Speaker 4: more of a of a climate climate issue. I think
Speaker 4: one thing that's really really important to highlight is that
Speaker 4: when you see, you know, this is not a fishery
Speaker 4: shutdown situation, This is a like you know, frozen starting
Speaker 4: an export ban situation. But when you do see, you know,
Speaker 4: a market being capped on a fishery, it seems a
Speaker 4: little bit scary, but that's actual responsible fisheries management in
Speaker 4: practic That means that you know, everyone's coming together and saying, hey,
Speaker 4: we're not seeing the amount of fish that we expected
Speaker 4: to see, or not seeing the size of fish that
Speaker 4: we expected to find. We need to shut down the
Speaker 4: fishing season and allow the fishery to repopulate itself. And
Speaker 4: I think the amazing thing is there's so so many
Speaker 4: examples of their being you know, decline and catch fisheries
Speaker 4: shutting down for between like three to five years, and
Speaker 4: in the span of that time fully becoming certified sustainable
Speaker 4: again aka able to fully repopulate and sustain themselves year
Speaker 4: over year. So I think that's really important for people
Speaker 4: to understand is like, don't freak out when you see
Speaker 4: when you see those empty shelves, like be happy that,
Speaker 4: like people are putting these restrictions into place.
Speaker 3: Do you get inbound business inquiries from companies that are
Speaker 3: probably marginally or somewhat below your standards like caneries in China,
Speaker 3: et cetera. Or there's like, look, you can say you
Speaker 3: might like your inbox flooded with different B to B
Speaker 3: suppliers at different parts of the supply chain offering yourself.
Speaker 4: Definitely, I would say, you know, my more like my
Speaker 4: LinkedIn with that, I feel like somehow they're still not
Speaker 4: getting my email by and large, or maybe they're going
Speaker 4: straight to my spam. But yes, I don't spend that
Speaker 4: much time looking at them, if I'm being honest.
Speaker 2: What's happened to your own sardine pricing in this environment?
Speaker 2: Because as I understand it, you know, you have this
Speaker 2: premium product which already is at a higher price point
Speaker 2: than some other equivalents. Does it go up further if
Speaker 2: people are, you know, struggling to find tin cans on
Speaker 2: the shelves of Trader Joe's or something like that.
Speaker 4: I do think that we expect our sardine prices to
Speaker 4: go up. It's like an active conversation. Again, all this
Speaker 4: is happening so quickly, But I think we can only
Speaker 4: assume that we will see and we will see prices
Speaker 4: go up as the two fisheries that we're sourcing from
Speaker 4: become more and more competitive.
Speaker 2: Then the other thing I want to ask again, as
Speaker 2: a non fish lover, we'll fish consumers. Do they trade
Speaker 2: to other types of fish if they can't get sardines?
Speaker 4: Yes, they too. I don't know if I have really
Speaker 4: good data to share on it, but we are definitely
Speaker 4: seeing folks come in in retail online starting with one
Speaker 4: species and then over time expanding to the rest of ours.
Speaker 4: It's a really good question. I would say, like, maybe
Speaker 4: not anthroviies, because antrothies generally aren't looked at as like
Speaker 4: the protein replacement in your meal. But between sardines, mackerel, tuna, salmon, troali,
Speaker 4: we're definitely seeing trading between species.
Speaker 3: So obviously, like to maintain a sort of valuable brand,
Speaker 3: you have to maintain the brand itself. Here is a
Speaker 3: question I've always wanted to ask someone this. We live
Speaker 3: in this age of brand collabs, right, it'll be like, oh,
Speaker 3: like Lululemon is dropping a new limited edition with like
Speaker 3: Kraft heinds macaroni and cheese, like you know, yoga gear
Speaker 3: like limited Yeah, yeah, so like I know you'd like
Speaker 3: done some you know, with like the Olive Oil Company,
Speaker 3: et cetera. Are brand collabs really brand collabs? Like Okay,
Speaker 3: we're gonna send three employees of yours and three and
Speaker 3: we're going to figure something out. Or is it like
Speaker 3: someone comes up with an idea and someone else writes
Speaker 3: to check and then they like co brand a post
Speaker 3: on Instagram.
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, they're so the former, I've never done
Speaker 4: anything like what you're describing With the second, I'm like,
Speaker 4: to my detriment, these collabs are like so so so
Speaker 4: in depth and you spend so many months on them. Yeah,
Speaker 4: we're about to have two huge collabs come out. One
Speaker 4: is coming out tomorrow with Whole Foods. We're doing a
Speaker 4: collaborative series of Toads, which they've never done with any
Speaker 4: brand before. There were no dollars exchanged. We've been working
Speaker 4: on it for you know, six months, and we're about
Speaker 4: to have I can share another one. It comes out
Speaker 4: after August eleventh, like these colloubs are so not pay
Speaker 4: to play in any way at all. Like our flyby
Speaker 4: Jing product collab, which is a very popular one. It's
Speaker 4: just you know, we buy their sauce at a wholesale price,
Speaker 4: we put it in our products, and like that's it.
Speaker 4: It's just super clean, classic ingredient purchasing.
Speaker 3: The other brand related question I have rather than take
Speaker 3: DTC to describe the broad of things like DiNovo brands
Speaker 3: right coming out of nowhere, et cetera. So you know,
Speaker 3: over the years, I think the ones that grew up
Speaker 3: in the twenty tens like paid an increasing like Instagram
Speaker 3: tax right to maintain that brand. I notice on your
Speaker 3: website you actually have a thing where influencers can email.
Speaker 3: They're like, oh, like I will post about fish wife
Speaker 3: and then you like arrange some deal with them. Is
Speaker 3: there are so many influencers out there, and there's so
Speaker 3: many want to be influencers. Do you feel that from
Speaker 3: your perspective you have good options or are the influencers
Speaker 3: that you actually want to work with because they're aligned
Speaker 3: with your esthetic and brand? Do they grow and grow
Speaker 3: their capacity to like, is there real scarcity of the
Speaker 3: types of influencers that you would actually want to work
Speaker 3: with rev than just ones that have a high follower count.
Speaker 4: I al feel there's scarcity at all. I think Fishwife
Speaker 4: has a unique relationship with the influencer landscape because we
Speaker 4: really don't do any pay to play. Like every once
Speaker 4: in a while will have an influencer make some content,
Speaker 4: and obviously we're going to compensate them for their content
Speaker 4: and then add a bump bump on top for their
Speaker 4: audience if it's like a collaborative post. But like we
Speaker 4: really have done it less than ten times in our life,
Speaker 4: so I think, you know, we're lucky. Do you do
Speaker 4: have brand?
Speaker 3: Like you have this affiliate program thing on your website
Speaker 3: and it says get paid when you share about Fishwife.
Speaker 4: That's the you know, commission based program different than a
Speaker 4: flat field I think basically to pay influencers flat fees
Speaker 4: to post on their Instagram, there can be truly like
Speaker 4: astronomical rates. I've been quoted, you know, forty thousand dollars,
Speaker 4: thirty thousand dollars for someone with let's say, like eight
Speaker 4: hundred thousand followers, Like we simply can't afford that, So
Speaker 4: you know, we have this AFFLID program influencers are in
Speaker 4: commission something that we have always invested in seating making
Speaker 4: sure that we're getting product in their hands. But yeah,
Speaker 4: there is kind of like a huge le between a
Speaker 4: commission based program and like paying a flat fee, which
Speaker 4: a lot of them are very very high.
Speaker 2: Just going back to the supply chain for a second,
Speaker 2: So packaging is obviously very important to Phish wife. You've
Speaker 2: got the branding aspect, but you also have the tins themselves.
Speaker 2: Everything's coming in a tin. Have you been impacted at
Speaker 2: all in recent months by you know, tariffs on things
Speaker 2: like aluminum packaging and stuff like that.
Speaker 4: The tariffs on aluminum packaging, we haven't seen like directly
Speaker 4: impact our business. First of all, we're not taking ownership
Speaker 4: of those our canaries by I see the tins, and
Speaker 4: we haven't seen like a meaningful increase. We've seen it
Speaker 4: in the course of our five five years of being
Speaker 4: business that ten prices have gone up were aluminum prices
Speaker 4: have gone up. But as of late, especially D's the tariffs,
Speaker 4: that has not been the biggest hit. Like we have
Speaker 4: had tariffs applied to the products that we're importing from Europe,
Speaker 4: those have an impact on the business and are not ideal.
Speaker 4: Europe has a fifteen percent tariff right now that was
Speaker 4: put in place in April twenty twenty five, and it sucks.
Speaker 4: It's like millions and millions of dollars. We got refunded
Speaker 4: a million and a half dollars last month, which was great,
Speaker 4: I showed up in the bank account.
Speaker 2: But now you'll have new tariffs.
Speaker 4: We now have new tariffs, and that one million and
Speaker 4: a half is not even yeah, it's it's a percentage
Speaker 4: of what we have paid in tariffs. We've always dealt
Speaker 4: with tariffs, like there has been a thirty five percent
Speaker 4: import duty on to an impact in all of oil
Speaker 4: since we started importing that product, and the tariffs don't
Speaker 4: stack so like for example, our tune and all oil
Speaker 4: when the tariff curtain fell, like we didn't increase in
Speaker 4: we didn't experience incremental tariffs. But no, it sucks. It definitely,
Speaker 4: like it hits scars margin and it just feels really stupid.
Speaker 4: So I wish that we didn't have to pay those millions.
Speaker 2: I got a terror free fund recently, which I didn't
Speaker 2: really understand because I thought only businesses were receiving this.
Speaker 2: But I got it for like seven dollars and fourteen cents.
Speaker 4: Congratulations, Yeah, thanks, thanks.
Speaker 3: You create a new category that's very pre at least
Speaker 3: in the US. Right, you create this new category of
Speaker 3: like premium tinted fish, and then others and I think
Speaker 3: you sort of alluded to this, then others discover it.
Speaker 3: You might get other startups or I could imagine, but
Speaker 3: I actually didn't do any research on this particular question.
Speaker 3: I could imagine that what you might get, and I
Speaker 3: think you see this is you have some existing company
Speaker 3: that is known for their commodity version, and then they'll
Speaker 3: come up with their equivalent of like the Starbucks Reserve,
Speaker 3: and they'll make a label that's probably like kind of
Speaker 3: a knockoff of a you know, a fishwife label or
Speaker 3: something similar, or other company will expand we'll do a
Speaker 3: tin fish line. They'll see the opportunity that you have found.
Speaker 3: And I'm curious, like you mentioned that there was a
Speaker 3: fair degree of slack in some of these cannary canaries
Speaker 3: in say twenty twenty one, where they're not doing three
Speaker 3: shifts a day, seven days a week. Do you see
Speaker 3: your demand decide more scarcity at the cannery level from
Speaker 3: companies essentially one way or another trying to get a
Speaker 3: share of your market.
Speaker 4: I would see where we're seeing scarcity, it's mostly because
Speaker 4: of the volume from Fishwife. Oh interesting, not a brag,
Speaker 4: but growing so much so quickly. That's what we're seeing,
Speaker 4: you know, sort of constraints, is that we're taking up
Speaker 4: so much more canning line than we thought we would
Speaker 4: be and they thought we would be in the span
Speaker 4: of two years. Yeah, I think it's we are lucky
Speaker 4: to have established like a couple modes. I think people
Speaker 4: are willing to pay for fish Rife because it is
Speaker 4: a really, really high quality product and because we have
Speaker 4: been able to tell the story of why it is
Speaker 4: a high quality product. Over the past five and a
Speaker 4: half years. We built the brand online, which you know
Speaker 4: hadn't never happened in the in the canfish category before.
Speaker 4: So it's a big leap to pay what you have
Speaker 4: to pay for a fish Rife product and to earn
Speaker 4: that pricing power. I think it's very challenging, to be
Speaker 4: quite honest, and takes a ton of brand building work,
Speaker 4: Like yes, the product has to taste truly amazing to
Speaker 4: get people to buy it and come back and come
Speaker 4: back and come back, but that brand building work is
Speaker 4: very difficult to replicate. And then I think, as you're
Speaker 4: seeing here like you have to be extremely agile on
Speaker 4: your feet in terms of supply chain, like it is not.
Speaker 4: No business is easy to round, No global supply chain
Speaker 4: is easy to run, and definitely seafood is not. So
Speaker 4: you know, we've seen new entrants come into the category,
Speaker 4: but honestly, in terms of like categories that clearly have heat,
Speaker 4: I would say ours has had less meaningful new entrance
Speaker 4: than many.
Speaker 2: Sorry, one more sourcing question, and again as a non
Speaker 2: fish person, I don't really get a lot of these distinctions.
Speaker 2: But I'm looking at some of your smoke salmon, smoke
Speaker 2: salmon with fly by Jing Chili crisp. It sounds it
Speaker 2: sounds good. It says that the salmon comes from it's
Speaker 2: farm salmon, not wild caught.
Speaker 4: How do you make the.
Speaker 2: Decision between wild caught and farmed and what are the distinctions?
Speaker 2: I never really understood this.
Speaker 4: I would say it started as a little bit of
Speaker 4: a happened stance of trying to figure out supply chain,
Speaker 4: and I really really struggle to stand up a wild
Speaker 4: Alaskan salmon supply chain. I justly could not get in
Speaker 4: touch with the canaries. I would get in touch with
Speaker 4: one like one supply or one other supplier, and they
Speaker 4: were sourcing different species of salmon and they didn't want
Speaker 4: to didn't want them to mix, Like I could not
Speaker 4: figure out how to scale it. Farm salmon makes up
Speaker 4: between seventy to eighty percent of the salmon that were
Speaker 4: eating globally. Like, if you're eating salmon, odds are you're
Speaker 4: eating farm salmon. It is a much much more manageable
Speaker 4: supply chain for so there's so much of it, and
Speaker 4: it freezes really well, it travels really really well, and
Speaker 4: you are not having to deal with seasonal purchasing, which,
Speaker 4: as you can imagine, you know, can necessitate the outlay
Speaker 4: of an enormous amounts of cash. With farms, they are
Speaker 4: producing throughout the year, harvest harvesting throughout the year. So
Speaker 4: it's a much is a much less lumpy cash outlay,
Speaker 4: which makes it just so much easier supply chain to navigate.
Speaker 4: There are fluctuations in pricing for farms and for sure,
Speaker 4: but slightly less allatile than wild.
Speaker 2: I think we're going to leave it there, but thank
Speaker 2: you so much for answering all of our fish related questions.
Speaker 2: Becca really appreciate it.
Speaker 4: Really a pleasure to really really get into it. I
Speaker 4: appreciate the opportunity.
Speaker 2: So there's a lot to pick out from that conversation.
Speaker 2: I mean, I hadn't Again, I don't think about salmon
Speaker 2: that often, but I hadn't realized that, Yeah, if you're
Speaker 2: if you're doing wild caught salmon and you can only
Speaker 2: buy at certain times of the year, then you are
Speaker 2: going to lay out like a huge amount of money
Speaker 2: because everyone's trying to do the same thing at the
Speaker 2: same time.
Speaker 3: No, it totally makes sense that it would be as
Speaker 3: the tech exists to farm salmon, that that would be
Speaker 3: a lot more appealing and you get all kinds of
Speaker 3: stability and stuff like that. I really enjoyed that conversation.
Speaker 3: There's so many like interesting strands there. I think it's
Speaker 3: interesting that like it's you know, so you see a
Speaker 3: headline like the catch in Morocco is down significantly, and
Speaker 3: you're like, and how that like we might not actually
Speaker 3: fully have the answers that, like people are trying to
Speaker 3: piece together or maybe it's something to do with the plankton.
Speaker 3: Maybe it's something to do with overfishing. Maybe it's something
Speaker 3: to do with water temperature, et cetera that we don't
Speaker 3: really know.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 2: I also find the connection there really interesting because like, Okay,
Speaker 2: something might be happening in the waters off Morocco. Maybe
Speaker 2: they're warming up, maybe the plankton aren't as fat or
Speaker 2: as bountiful as they used to be. But suddenly that
Speaker 2: becomes not just Morocco's problem, but another country's problem in
Speaker 2: the form of Spain. So it seems like the Moroccan
Speaker 2: sardine export ban is now becoming a diplomatic issue with
Speaker 2: the Spanish because now there are attempts to get to
Speaker 2: for Spain to take Morocco to the negotiating table and
Speaker 2: actually get them to like call off the export ban.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's wild. And the fact that like there is
Speaker 3: actually quite a big market for trading ups. I mean,
Speaker 3: I guess like if you need sardine, you need sardine,
Speaker 3: and another fish isn't going to work. And so the
Speaker 3: idea that like, okay, now there is suddenly you know,
Speaker 3: even if it's like a very different supply chain at first,
Speaker 3: that the impairment of the sort of commodity supply chain
Speaker 3: will invariably affect the premium supply chain.
Speaker 2: I honestly think the trading up phenomenon when it comes
Speaker 2: to food inflation is a real thing. So you know,
Speaker 2: people are thinking, well, if I'm going to have to
Speaker 2: pay twenty dollars for a pack of ground beef, I
Speaker 2: might as well spend thirty dollars and get some steaks
Speaker 2: or something like that. In fact, I had that conversation
Speaker 2: with a woman in a supermarket the other day. Also,
Speaker 2: can I just say, I know, I just put the
Speaker 2: whole episode talking about how I don't like fish. Yes,
Speaker 2: but I was at a dinner party last weekend and
Speaker 2: a former teak wood supplier who we should get on
Speaker 2: the podcast. He's now an organic farmer. He made candied salmon.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, this and it was so good I ever
Speaker 2: had it before and it was actually delicious and I
Speaker 2: ate the whole thing.
Speaker 3: No, that is that's really tasty. So that's a good
Speaker 3: entree too, Like maybe more exploration on your part. Well, word,
Speaker 3: there's all kinds of fish that theoretically you might like.
Speaker 2: I like a lot of stuff. I like sea urchin,
Speaker 2: I love raw sea urchin, I love oysters. I love
Speaker 2: a lot of that stuff. But I don't know just
Speaker 2: like cooked fish. I get I get it anyway? Should
Speaker 2: we leave it there?
Speaker 3: Let's see it there?
Speaker 2: This has been another episode of the Authoughts podcast. I'm
Speaker 2: Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 3: And I'm Joe Wisenthal. You can follow me at The Stalwart.
Speaker 3: Follow Becca Milstein on Instagram at bb Milstein. Follow our
Speaker 3: producers Kerman Rodriguez at Kerman Arman, dash El Bennett at Dashbot,
Speaker 3: Kilbrooks at Kelbrooks and Kevin Lozano at Kevin Lloyd Lozano.
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