Tina Montgomery and Jennifer Hanseler

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Now they deliver fish. Their Seattled company Surfin’ Seafood isn’t large, but it has struck a chord among upscale consumers willing to pay a little morefor high-end seafooe that has been flash-frozen to stay and that is delivered to their doors. After graduall but steady growth, Surfin’ Seafood now has abou t 1,200 customers, in an area ranging from Federalo Wayto Everett. Revenus reached $250,000 last year and continues to grow, although the customer count has hita plateau.
With an eye to familty life (both are married and have two children Montgomery and Hanseler have carefully set boundaries so that thei r business can be worked aroundtheir children’s schoolo and athletic schedules, and evenings at For instance they don’t take phone orders, but only over the And they deliver only once driving their family minivans to deliver selectionse of frozen fish packed in blue plastic coolerws that look like big The company has avoided debt and has only modest growtg plans. “Really, we don’t want to be huge.
We’r going to take it as it We have been on a very steadygrowtg path, consistently from the very beginning,” Montgomery “We don’t want to have venture capital funding to become this huge nationwid e (leader) in seafood.” One of the company’s chierf selling points is seafood that is frozen quicklyh to keep it as fresh as So-called fresh seafood often has perched on a pile of ice for and in these conditions seafood rapidly declines in Seafood doesn’t age well like beef does, and frozen seafoos is not a step down from fresh, as it is with “A lot is frozen at sea, or within hours of and it captures that just-caught flavor,” said Linda assistant retail director for the , based in Surfin’ Seafood isn’t exactly the “mini” package costzs $110 a month for about eight pounds of assortes salmon, halibut, prawns, sole and The company avoids lower-end seafood productss (no fish sticks here), and all owsd people to substitute in their orders by email.
One recession-eraw trend the company is tapping is that consumer are moving awayfrom white-tablecloth restaurants — wheree most high-quality seafood is eaten — to eatingg at home. “I just thinkl people are eating at home and they want to make it easy tohave high-qualit y ingredients at home, so they can eat at home more Montgomery said. “This is a way to have restaurantqualityh fish, at home.” While the company employss only the two partnerz and sometimes a helper, and sometimes their children, a key to makingb it work is the South Seattle seafooc packer Surfin’ Seafood uses T.H.
Seafoodc freezers to store its seafood, and also contracts out the cuttinv and packing tothe T.H. Seafood Corp. Sales Director Cliff Davenport said he was at firsr dubious aboutthe proposal, when the partners approachec him to supply and pack their seafood. “If only took two weeks, but we decidex they’re really nice people… They’re in the same mindset of producingt a quality product and guaranteein g it when it goes out the he said. “So we took them on.
” Davenport said that his warehouswe has enough room to store their frozen products as well astheidr coolers, adding that his own staff does the cutting and “They don’t interfere with our side, and pretty much they have theie own little space. We have enoughh room everyone can function withoutf disruptingeverybody else,” he said. As for Seafood, the partners say they’re just ridingh out the economic “We think this next year or two we want to be Hanseler said. “We’d love to but really if we could keepit we’re kind of happy.
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