Per-capita seafood consumption has changed little over the last couple of years and the explanation is simple; you’re asking the wrong people for answers and targeting the wrong people to buy seafood.
I’ve been a retail seafood specialist for a major grocery chain for the past 13 years and keep seeing the same mistakes over and over again. First, the questionnaires and surveys are targeting people who already buy seafood, and second, no one at the corporate level is asking or paying attention to the people who actually sell seafood.
Grocery stores have a captive audience of thousands of people a week, yet dollar wise we only sell 2.5 percent of total sales to them. We try to sell more seafood to people who already buy seafood, and miss the people who do not buy seafood at all. Does the seafood industry have any kind of focused sales plan without the hidden agendas or misleading facts? The government has its “eat seafood twice a week” plan but any good sales person knows this is not specific, is not measurable, has no real time frame and therefore is not attainable.
