For the past five years, Verlasso, which produces premium farmed salmon in pens off the coast of Patagonia, has exhibited at the Epcot International Food and Wine Festival in Orlando, Florida.
The festival, which has been taking place since 1995, showcases food from around the world. Created to boost attendance during a normally slow time at Disney World, it is now one of the theme park’s largest annual events, with tens of thousands of attendees. This year, the festival runs from 31 August to 13 November – a record 75 days.
Miami, Florida-based Verlasso’s tie-in with the festival has paid off in spades for the salmon producer, Jennifer Bushman, a strategic development and marketing consultant for the company, told SeafoodSource. This year, Verlasso is offering up to visitors its salmon served with chimichurri sauce and a quinoa salad. It’s is one of the most popular at the festival, said Bushman – who, in addition to her marketing role, is also a chef who developed the marquee dish herself.
Verlasso’s sponsorship of the festival done wonders in raising the supplier’s profile with consumers, business clients, and other festivals, Bushman said. So much so that Verlasso stepped up its involvement this year, hosting four cooking classes and participating in a “Party for the Senses” event that draws 1,500 people.
“The kiosk tells the Verlasso salmon story and where we are from, and we also get to be on stage educating people,” Bushman said.
Pam Smith, a culinary consultant and longtime host of the festival’s complimentary cooking demonstrations, said participating in the demos gave Verlasso an extra edge.
“For the culinary demonstrations that we do, it’s such a delight to be able to share with guests the story of sustainable seafood and how to be able to source it themselves,” Smith said. “We explain what a company like Disney goes through to have the best products that they can.”
As a result of Verlasso’s presence at the festival and especially in the demos, Smith said attendees then ask where they can buy the company’s salmon.
“It’s probably the [top] question that we get,” Smith said. “We try to find out where that person is and try to connect them to the store where they are going to be able to find it, such as Heinen’s or Kroger.”
Bushman said having a national distribution network in place was vital to converting Verlasso’s participation in the Epcot festival into increased sales.
“You need to make sure you are available in places where people can find it when they come home,” Bushman said. “If they go home to Colorado, for example, and can’t find your fish, it doesn’t work.”
While Bushman said Verlasso was happy building up its customer base one-by-one, she said that the festival has also helped it to land bigger fish, including the company’s host at the festival.
Walt Disney World executives were so impressed with Verlasso’s product that they signed the company to be the primary salmon supplier to the all of Disney’s theme parks and resorts in Orlando.
“They were introduced to Verlasso through our partnership with the Food and Wine Festival, [which] helped to expose the chefs to Verlasso,” Bushman said. "This built the distribution relationship as well as pricing that enabled them to carry it more broadly across the portfolio. It also meets the sustainability standards that they committed to with Seafood Watch.”
With the philosophy that a larger marketing effort of the sustainable seafood movement can benefit all the companies who play a role in it, ¬¬Bushman highly recommended sponsorship of the festival to other seafood suppliers.
“We would love nothing more than seeing a row of sustainable seafood companies there,” Bushman said. “It’s an investment that is not that much – and one that people should be exploring.”
