March 16, 2021 — Almost exactly a year ago, Ian Amin, the senior director of supply chain for Home Chef, a Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.-based meal kit and food delivery company, was driving to pick up a new puppy in Wisconsin when he received a call from his boss that would change the trajectory of his entire year.
Kroger, which bought Home Chef in 2018, was facing an acute food shortage as a result of panic-buying driven by the rapid spread of COVID-19 across the United States.
December 16, 2020 — The Wild Alaskan Company based in Homer has taken “mission based” seafood e-commerce to a whole new level.
While many Alaska fishermen and groups sell boxes of seafood directly to customers and can claim several hundred monthly customers, Wild Alaskan has notched more than 140,000 seafood regulars since 2018 and since COVID hit, the company is adding 100 to 200 customers every day. The average order for their subscription service is $160 per month.
Founder Arron Kallenberg calls it a “three generation overnight success,” referring back to 1926 when his grandfather moved from New Jersey to fish at Bristol Bay.
“My dad grew up fishing with my grandfather, I grew up fishing with my father, but that being said, I was the nerdy kid that took his laptop out to sea in Bristol Bay,” Kallenberg said, adding that his grandfather, Robert, served on the Alaska territorial Board of Fisheries, as an adviser to the International North Pacific Fisheries Commission and wrote his Master’s thesis at Cornell University on conserving Bristol Bay’s red salmon fishery.
March 17, 2020 — Crowds have thinned at Seattle’s famed Pike Place Fish Market, as fears of the spread of coronavirus are keeping more and more consumers home.
The normal scrum of phone-wielding tourists surrounding the typically boisterous fish market was practically absent over the weekend, but Anders Miller, one of the market’s four co-owners, said the drop in foot traffic has coincided with a spike in online orders.