Among Sea Best's products is a line of frozen seafood dips in on-trend flavors.
“At Natural Grocers, education plays a key role in helping our communities make an informed purchasing decision,” notes Christie Zimmerman, product standards manager, food at Lakewood, Colo.-based Natural Grocers at Vitamin Cottage. “We believe that consumers do not need to be ‘told’ what to do — we only need to present materials in an easily understood manner so that they can feel empowered to make a decision based on facts, data and transparency. Labels can be confusing, so we’ve worked hard to condense a lot of complex industry jargon into about 10 seconds at the point of purchase in stores.”
Frozen Assets
One interesting effect of the pandemic on seafood sales was the growth of the frozen segment.
“In looking at both meat and seafood, it is very interesting to see how frozen was long seen as a negative in meat, whereas in seafood, fresh and frozen are equally big,” notes Roerink. “In fact, they were equally big at the start of the pandemic, but frozen seafood actually outgrew fresh.”
In the recent past, while consumers may have purchased frozen products for their convenience, they didn’t necessarily believe they were making the best purchase from a quality standpoint. That perception appears to be changing.
“Going into the pandemic, consumers were already embracing frozen seafood, in line with a resurgence of frozen foods in general as consumers realized that frozen foods are generally as nutritious, if not more, than their fresh counterparts,” observes Megan Rider, domestic marketing director at the Juneau-based Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute. “The pandemic has only strengthened this trend, with more people wanting to stock up on frozen foods in order to limit trips to the grocery store. According to a 2020 FMI report, 82% of consumers are likely to purchase frozen fish.”
“Not that long ago, ‘fresh’ was viewed as the preferred choice to frozen seafood,” admits Chris Hussey, VP of marketing at Gloucester, Mass.-based Gorton’s Seafood. “Now consumers increasingly value frozen for its ability to naturally preserve the taste, texture [and] nutrients of seafood, and to reduce food waste. As consumers are making fewer trips to the grocery store and stocking up their freezers, frozen seafood offers a high-quality, convenient, easy-to-prepare and stock-up-friendly alternative.”
“2020 was a great year for frozen seafood,” affirms Bluzette Carline, director of corporate marketing at Jacksonville, Fla.-based Beaver Street Fisheries Inc., maker of the Sea Best brand. “Frozen seafood has typically been given a bad rap, as many shoppers preferred fresh over frozen. But out of something bad came something good for our industry. While Americans were faced with stay-at-home orders, many needed to stock their freezers with healthy frozen proteins to carry them through till the next trip to the store. This blessing in disguise was a great way to overcome the stigma around frozen seafood, and many quickly learned that frozen can taste just as fresh and delicious as fresh.”
According to Hussey: “Frozen seafood is finally starting to get the love it deserves, so we recently launched Gorton’s ‘It’s Seafood Time’ campaign to inspire consumers to reimagine seafood and how it fits into their daily lives, while reinforcing all the real benefits it offers. Oftentimes, the best things in life, including seafood, go overlooked — it’s full of omega-3s and protein, tastes fresh, is incredibly versatile, etc. — and we want to change that.”
The brand is promoting the message via its multidimensional marketing support. “As part of an integrated plan spanning shopper marketing, TV, digital video, digital display and a partnership, we use social media and influencer marketing to teach consumers about the health benefits of eating seafood,” explains Hussey. “During a time when the public is looking for recipe inspiration and new, easy meal ideas, we want them to know that they can depend on us and the options we can provide to their households.”
The pandemic “has presented an ideal opportunity for our industry to take advantage of the current discovery [of] frozen seafood by consumers,” notes Carline. “The perfect time is now to educate and establish a comfort and familiarity with seafood that may change consumer perception for the future.”
There’s also the notion of what “frozen” seafood actually means.
“Most consumers assume fresh means ‘fresh,’ not ‘previously frozen, [and] now thawing at your local butcher counter,’” says Natural Grocers’ Zimmerman. “Certainly, some ‘fresh fish’ sold is truly fresh, but in general, the rule is that fish is only fresh for about two days. The farther one is away from the source of where the fish was caught, the less likely it is that the ‘fresh fish’ was only caught two days ago. It’s more likely to assume the fish was frozen, shipped and then taken out of the freezer to sell as ‘fresh.’ In reality, shoppers are mostly paying for someone else to thaw out their fish for them.