September 25, 2013 — Northeast U.S. seafood exports are being helped along this month by a marketing blitz in a Beijing supermarket chain popular with China’s wealthy. Running from 13-26 September at BHG Supermarkets, owned by the Beijing Hualian conglomerate, the promotion pushes three key species: scallops, red snapper and lobster. The campaign is run by Seafood Export Northeast, a federal export promotions body which drives demand overseas for seafood from ten northeastern states, including Maine, New Jersey and Rhode Island.
When SeafoodSource visited BHG’s outlet in Sanlitun this week, U.S. lobster was selling at RMB 69.80 (USD 11.40, EUR 8.43) per 500g while U.S. red snapper was selling for RMB 29.80 (USD 4.87, EUR 3.60) for 500g.
Timed well to coincide with the traditional mid-Autumn festival and the run up to the annual National Day holiday (which runs through the first week of October) the promotion was organized by a local marketing agency hired by Seafood Export Northeast USA. The promotion was also pushed in media adverts including a full-page advertisement in the Mandarin-language edition of Time Out magazine.
In-store advertising at eleven BHG outlets across Beijing includes a range of recipes — available to customers in leaflet format — devised by leading Chinese chefs featuring ways of preparing scallops, red snapper and lobster. Liu Xin Xin, chef at the Accor Hotel Beijing properties for instance devised a scallop dish. Meanwhile a western-style red snapper dish was devised by He Li Zhi, a chef at both the Peninsula Hotel and Hong Kong Macau Centre Hotel in Beijing.
Read the full story at Seafood Source