How a Sardine Gets From the Ocean to a Can | Odd Lots

Yeah, I mean, I think it's the same story as like all American manufacturing stories. There were once booming canneries on either coast of the US, in California, probably read Cannery Row, or on the coast of Maine. There were these bigger, more industrial canneries, and a combination of factors contributed to those shutting down. Basically, like almost all canneries in the U.S. shut down like 15 years ago. Today there are, this is an estimate, but I would say like five-ish in the lower 48, and then probably several more in Alaska. Alaska is where you would find some of the bigger or more industrial canneries that are doing like commodity, Alaskan canned salmon, etc. But yeah, I think due to a combination of factors, I know that there were really stringent FDA rules put in place about 15 years ago that a lot of the canneries in the US couldn't upkeep, couldn't manage. Some of the fisheries really declined. So the Pacific sardine and anchovy fisheries, you know, there have been moments of real decline on both the East and West Coast, and with the decline of those fisheries and the shutting down of those fisheries, the canneries followed.

I can't wait for that day, Tracy, I truly can't.

It's very good. Brand new. That is loose. Definitely a big focus. When I started working on the brand, you got to kind of do a bait and switch. There are a lot of people out there.

Excellent. I mean, many, as many as you'll allow. But yeah, we had to really counter position from what Americans associated with canned fish, which as you probably know, was, you know, white and blue super commodity non-branded canned fish. So obviously we went the hard left, all hand illustrated, super beautiful branding. And we have our illustrator, you know, on staff creating illustrations for us every single day.

But the idea was to kind of make a premium tinned fish product that would maybe make Americans think a little bit more like in Europe.

100%. Yeah. So I, I'm from New Hampshire. Originally I studied abroad in southern Spain in college in a city called Granada. And Granada is a very interesting variety.

I have, yeah. I've had some of the best jamón of my life in Granada and cheese.

The interesting thing about Granada is that, to my knowledge, it is still the only city in Spain that serves three tapas with every drink. So if you get like a little glass of beer or a little glass of wine, they will bring you out, whether it's, you know, very low end potato chips or very high end, like sardines. All those jamón, you're just always being fed beautiful little bites. And I was super inspired experiencing that and just seeing how delicious these little snacks were, because, you know, they're super simple, no cooking involved. But the ingredients were of such a high quality that it just tasted so, so good, no matter really what little bar I was at. So between that and seeing the way that Spaniards eat and, you know, really just treasure the high quality of their food products, and then traveling to Portugal, which is like where everyone has their conservas experience. And that's certainly where I had mine in Lisbon, you know, seeing these beautiful shops with rows and rows of gorgeous tin fish, like it could not have been more different than my Market Basket in southern New Hampshire. And I at the time, certainly, you know, at age 20, wasn't like, I'm going to do this for the rest of my life. But during the Covid-19 pandemic, I started eating more canned fish. Really, really good for you. Ready to eat straight out of the tin. Shelf stable. You know, when we were all trying to not go to the grocery store as much as possible. And there was sort of a light bulb moment, you know, seeing, I know you had Alison Roman on this podcast. Yeah. Seeing folks like Alison Roman and Anthony Bourdain and David Chang, like they had all been espousing how incredible, especially, you know, really high quality anchovies or really high quality canned tuna. It was only in the ether. And I was starting to see in my own peer group, you know, people posting pictures of like little meals they were creating at home with tinned fish, which is fascinating because I really feel like before Covid that that was not a habitual thing for people to do, like make a beautiful lunch in person on Instagram. So weird. And obviously now it's completely ubiquitous. All of those factors combined added with the bump. I think the canned fish category saw like a 10% year over year increase during the Covid-19 pandemic, which is crazy. It has not been like that since. Broadly. And I was like, Americans deserve a better product. I think they'll be willing to pay for it. So that was, that was really the origin of the company.

I'll give you the most simple, straightforward version first.

Which is because the thing that you'll learn throughout this conversation is that every seafood supply chain and canned seafood supply chain is completely different and very strange. So the first, I'll give an example of is our Cantabrian anchovies.

So we source our anchovies from a tiny town in northern Spain called Santoña. And if you go to this town, Santoña, you will be blown away because it is completely occupied by anchovy canneries. Like that is the town. You walk through this tiny city and it's like every canned anchovy brand you've ever heard of, their logo like plastered on a big warehouse. So in that case, the fishermen are going out like six miles from shore. They're using the purse seine method of fishing, which is, it basically is like a big, big wide net that's cast out into the top, sort of the top of the ocean. It encircles a school of fish. And then the net is sort of pulled together and the fish are brought out of the water and then immediately put on ice. And then they're brought, you know, six miles into shore and they're taken to the anchovy auction. And they are marked with a number that indicates the quality of the anchovies. So that's like the size of the anchovy. Has it been damaged? The fattiness of the anchovy. It's marked with that quality signifier. And then the bids begin. In this case, there's usually one or two folks from each cannery. And keep in mind, these canneries are, by and large, maybe all multi-generational family owned. The cannery that we work with was started in the 1940s by a man who now has had three generations of offspring that have taken over his business and, you know, have grown and expanded his business. So anyway, today, the grandson of this man goes to the anchovy auction and you will, you know, have a price in mind to bid on these anchovies. And how about a bunch of anchovies? And those anchovies will be taken mere three blocks away from where that auction is happening. And they'll be immediately processed, which in this case means... I mean, I'm going deep in the processing.

So that means that the anchovies will be basically headed and tailed, so their heads will be clipped, their tails will be clipped, and then they will be put into a barrel of rock salt in layers. And they'll be left there for anywhere between 12 to 36 months. And actually, the longer they're in there, the higher quality they are. That being said, three years is a very, very, very long time. So it's a really expensive product and a pretty limited market. Our anchovies are on average held in there from 12 to 18 months. And during that time, you know, they're cured and they develop all that beautiful flavor that we associate with anchovies. And then I'm going to keep going. At the end of that 12 to 18 month period, they're removed from that bucket of rock salt and their innards are removed. And basically like the beautiful little pink anchovy that we all know and love emerges from what otherwise looks like a pretty normal little silver fish. Like honestly, when you see anchovies for the first time, like a lot of people think they're sardines because they are these substantial long silver fish. So anyway, they're cleaned, that lovely little pink anchovy is removed and then laid one at a time in the tin that you see when you buy a Fishwife anchovy product. They're cleaned extensively, they're rinsed and washed, and then those cans are filled with extra virgin olive oil in our case, and they're steamed. And then anchovies are very unique because unlike the rest of our tinned fish products, they are cured through that salt curing method. So they're not actually heat treated. Which makes them a dramatically more sensitive product and a much shorter shelf life product than the rest of our tins. So the rest of our tins have an average of between a 5 to 7 year shelf life, which I think you can imagine is like truly incredible to have as a food business owner. Like there are very, very few products with that shelf life. Anchovies only have about a year long shelf life because of that salt curing method. And they can't be exposed to heat because they'll disintegrate. So that's like the simplest supply chain.

That being said, anchovies as an actual product are by far, far and away our most complex to, you know, store and manage and ship.

I did not. No. I had been in the working world for about four years in the entertainment industry before starting the business.

Sort of the interesting crux of the story is in CPG, and, you know, in emerging brand CPG, it's very well known that quote unquote getting line time or getting a co-manufacturer to work with you is very challenging because, you know, who knows if you're going to be around in a couple of years. Your product probably has a bunch of weird like better-for-you ingredients that the co-man doesn't want to deal with. They would much rather work with much, much bigger companies that they can rely on to produce massive batches of whatever product you're working on. This case is a bit interesting because when I started the business, I was reaching out to, you know, mostly co-manufacturers, factories, suppliers, etc. in America. And first and foremost, everyone was like, why are you trying to start a canned fish business? Like the canned fish industry is declining. Why don't you do pouches? The pouch industry is booming. And I was like, that's really not the vibe I'm going for, guys. Honestly, it doesn't really capture the European romantic aesthetic. So that was definitely at play. It wasn't like, trying to think of another industry. I don't know, a beverage. Beverage is always, you know, kind of going up into the right. It wasn't like I had a bunch of other young entrepreneurs that I was competing with for this line time, and it wasn't like the category was, yeah, off like a shot. It was flat or in decline. So I think when we reached out to these European canneries, which I started doing, you know, started with the American manufacturers, like get in touch with, and then very quickly start reaching out to manufacturers in Spain, Portugal. There is this, you know, America is the biggest market in the world. Establishing a market in a foreign country is, you know, near to impossible because of all of the marketing and brand building work you have to do. That being said, it's this incredibly attractive market. There's, you know, very, very affluent, really high paying customers. So I think when we reached out to these canneries, they must have seen that. They must have seen, okay, here is, you know, someone who's going to work really hard to try to build a market for this really premium product in America. And we don't then have to go do that work because, again, nearly impossible to accomplish. And, you know, we have capacity. Like these canneries, they are mostly not operating at, you know, three shifts a day, seven days a week. Maybe they're operating at, you know, one or two shifts a day for five days a week. So there was some capacity at all of these canneries that we reached out to. I think the crazy part for them is seeing how quickly an American business can grow because, you know, as I mentioned, these businesses have been around for generations. They're family owned. They're not venture backed. They're not looking to, you know, scale in a few years and exit. Like the way that we think about business in the US is just so different from how these businesses are, you know, conceiving of their own. Like if they have 5% year over year growth, that's amazing. Flat, fine. In some cases, I don't want to generalize, but like they're certainly not trying to grow 250% year over year. So I think, you know, Fishwife has been around for five and a half years now. The demand has been revealed for these products. And I think watching these partners that maybe have been fine with 5% year over year growth and seeing Fishwife, you know, volume requests triple, quadruple year over year, it's like hard for them to wrap their heads around.

Yeah, it's a great question. So our 0 to 1 year was 2021 and it had a distinct supply chain from the one that we have today for the most part. So as I mentioned, when I started working on the business, I was looking and open to a supply chain both in North America and Europe. So in the first year of the business, I started working with, the first cannery we ever worked with was a tiny micro cannery in Oregon on the coast of Oregon. This is mostly servicing sports fishermen from, you know, the West Coast, whether in California up to Washington. So like we're not talking mochas here. This is people coming in bringing their catch and saying, hey, make me an, you know, 500 cans of tuna. So that was the first cannery that we started working with. One in Washington state, which was very similar profile, micro cannery, super hands on, no MOQ. And to be honest, what's the most used for?

Oh, great. Thank you. So yeah, speaking to the issues I mentioned earlier, a huge issue that startups face is, you know, I want to start a beverage company. You need to make 50,000 units of your sparkling water brand, you know, on your first round before you have any demand, before anyone knows who the heck you are. So all in all, we didn't have an MOQ issue. We certainly didn't have it in the domestic canneries because they are so, so small. And then when we started working with our first cannery in Spain, which we still work with today, we still work with the cannery in Washington state, that MOQ is still on the smaller side. I think it was maybe 20,000 units, I think. So that year, you know, I think I ordered 20,000 units of our sardines with preserved lemon. And it lasted us maybe the entire year. But it was super messy. Like, I had no idea what I was doing. I mean, demand planning, it was probably the worst thing I met in the entire company. Half of them. So we, like in the Oregon cannery, we went out of stock unexpectedly. We were out of stock of two products for three months. Like that is what the 0 to 1 year looked like. It was stop, stop starts, etc. But all the while, even with those stops and starts and even with that very small amount of inventory, I was really able to build the brand that year. Like we still got a lot of press coverage, we still got a lot of influencer coverage. And, you know, was able to build the brand even though the supply chain has since transformed significantly.

It's become easier and harder.