Alaskan Leader has begun launching a new pre-made deli kit of its miso black cod across the U.S. in the wake of big sales of its frozen retail portions.
Alaskan Leader has been steadily building interest in its miso black cod for multiple years, and its Wild Caught Alaska Black Cod in Japanese Miso Marinade won multiple people’s choice awards at the Alaska Symphony of Seafood in 2022. Since that time, the product has continued to win awards, and its Miso Black Cod Deli Kits won Best New Foodservice Product at the Alaska Symphony of Seafood in 2024.
The product has been doing more than winning awards, Alaskan Leader Seafoods Value-Added Programs President Keith Singleton told SeafoodSource. It has also been seeing huge success at the markets it is carried in – enough that the company has expanded internationally across all of Canada and is planning to launch its miso black cod product in the U.K. on 6 February.
The launch of the new product comes just over a week after it generated buzz at the 2025 Global Seafood Market Conference in Palm Desert, California, where Circana Executive Vice President and Protein Practice Leader Chris Dubois credited it for the massive sales bump black cod saw in 2024. DuBois – who emphasized the need for new flavors and convenient items to sell seafood – said the product was a big winner in the retail category.
“We were going through some of our stats; we were trying to look at what was going on, and I saw this number on black cod, or sable fish,” Dubois said. “This had to be one of the most spectacular things that crossed my eyes because it doesn’t happen that often. Trust me, I’ve seen hundreds of products, and we’ve worked through hundreds of reports. They go, ‘How does something go up 2,000 percent. That can’t be right; we must have a data issue.’”
Dubois said the 2,000 percent increase wasn’t a data error and was largely because Alaskan Leader’s miso black cod product was selling so well it pulled the entire species up with it.
“Alaskan Leader built a tremendous product that has really sold,” Dubois said.
Singleton said the shoutout from Dubois at the conference was a complete surprise and had immediate positive results for the company on top of its already solid sales. Alaskan Leader Vice President of Sales Scott Sandvig said the company saw immediate reactions – some even before the presentation was over.
“Scott texted me and said, ‘What’s going on? My phone is blowing up.’ So people started calling right away to the office, asking where they could getr it,” Singleton said.
As a result of that bump, Singleton said retailers have been in discussions about the product, and Alaskan Leader is working on more launches at new locations.
The bump also happened to come just before the company launched its new deli kits across the U.S. on 29 January to be featured in Costco stores. The product is already being shipped out and will be expanded across all regions in two-week increments.
“So the L.A. region and I would think the Northern California region will have product on the shelf by [30 January] and certainly by [31 January] at the latest,” Sandvig said. “Then, every two weeks, we’ll expand to two or three more regions until every region is carrying the product, hopefully before the end of April.”
The new product features the company’s miso marinated Alaska black cod, which the company developed alongside Hikari – an organic miso producer from Japan. Singleton and Sandvig both met with the company and developed a special miso marinade specifically for its black cod.
From there, the company met with a rice producer in Sacremento, California, who is providing a jasmine ginger rice for the deli kit, and secured a source for bok choy to round it out into a complete meal.
“It’s a four-portion family dinner, with a good healthy portion of fresh bok choy, and you just bake it,” Singleton said. “You follow the directions on the Costco sales label.”
Sandvig said the new product builds on its existing portion boxes and makes it even more convenient for consumers.
“We basically took an item that was successful, easy to prepare – you don’t have to think about it too much – and we’ve basically supercharged it. It’s sitting there in a tray with your starch, and your veggie, and your protein, pre-marinated, ready to go,” Sandvig said. “You put it in the oven, 40 minutes, you have a full meal with one pan, no mess, no major cleanup, and a restaurant quality dinner.”
The big sales of its product was exactly what Alaskan Leader was looking for in order to capitalize on the growing quota for black cod in the Alaska. The quota has been steadily increasing in recent years, going from 26 million pounds in 2019 to 62 million pounds in 2023. The final 2024 sablefish total allowable catch in the Gulf of Alaska, per the federal register, was set to just under 50 million pounds, while the 2025 TAC is set to just over 50 million pounds.
That big increase in quota meant a big increase in supply – but the market for the species was largely relegated to the Japanese market. The miso black cod product was meant to develop a new market for it and increase the pay to fishermen – which Singleton said has been working.
“We were doing this because the boats were tied up. Fuel prices were so high; bait prices and inflation had set in on the waterfront,” he said.
Now, boats are back on the water, and fishermen are enthusiastic thanks to the bump in price at the boat.
“It’s been a 30 percent to 50 percent value increase to the boats, in their fish tickets. It’s substantial,” Singleton said. “The enthusiastic phone calls we get from fishermen are pretty cool. That just gets me excited because I’m a fisherman, and that’s for me, personally, it’s high-five-able. It’s awesome.”
