Samuels and Son Seafood is expanding both its number of locations and its menu of seafood offerings.
After expanding into Orlando and Las Vegas last year, the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.-based wholesale restaurant supplier is opening additional locations in the Boston, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Houston areas, according to marketing communications manager William Bradford.
“With the reception that we’ve seen in our new locations, we decided to parlay that success and branch out further,” Bradford told SeafoodSource at Seafood Expo North America on Sunday, 17 March.
Samuels and Son was formally founded by Giuseppe Ippolito in Philadelphia as a retail market in 1945. Under the leadership of Sammy D'Angelo, Ippolito's grandson, it entered the wholesale market in 1989. Today, the company remains family-owned, with D’Angelo’s own children all holding leadership roles in various parts of the firm’s operations.
The company has grown to the point where it now handles more than 40 million pounds of seafood annually through its four locations (besides Philadelphia, Orlando, and Las Vegas, Samuels and Son also operates in Pittsburgh). In an article in The Philadelphia Inquirer, D’Angelo said keeping a finger on the pulse of the seafood industry has helped his company compete with the larger national broadliners.
“One thing that we do better than the [broadliners], for sure, is understand the product line,” he said. “If you understand the product line, if you understand the seasonality, you understand market trends. We don't just get on the phone and place an order. We're studying day-in and day-out.”
Bradford said in addition seafood IQ, the key to the company’s success can be found in the family values imbued by the D’Angelos.
“The [D’Angelo] family is still extremely hands-on,” he said. “They have developed the standards and processes by which the entire company operates, and they work hard to implement those standards and constantly improve them. That showed in the success of the company in [Philadelphia], and more recently in Pittsburgh. And they will ensure those standards stay in place as we expand.”
Bradford told SeafoodSource that Samuels and Son also excels at finding and selling products that the company’s customers love and come back to frequently.
“We are very aggressive purchasers and marketers,” he said.
To demonstrate that fact, Bradford said the company has never had as many new products to showcase at Seafood Expo North America as it has this year. For example, Samuels and Son is now carrying Astan Tuna from Purefish, which arrives in the United States from Sri Lanka as quickly as 72 hours after being caught. The yellowfin tuna is Friend of the Sea-certified and Bradford said the product is fair trade and is produced with methods that leave zero unused bycatch.
Samuels and Son also recently added Aquanaria sea bass (branzino) raised in Spain’s Canary Islands.
“Aquanaria offers a better way to harvest, both for the fish and for those who eat them,” the company said in its product launch. “After more than four decades dedicated exclusively to this project, Aquanaria has achieved major advancements in the aquaculture of bronzino. Today, they are the leading producer of the most gourmet bronzino that is preferred around the world.”
And Samuels and Son has become a distributor of Mazzetta Company’s Oishii shrimp, which was launched in January.
“Oishii shrimp is harvested through dedicated small-batch aquaculture methods, proprietary pond construction, cutting-edge aquaculture techniques, and strict water-quality monitoring that produces a quality of shrimp that is second-to-none,” Samuels and Son said. “In fact, Oishii shrimp is the first shrimp to be transported to the facility live, resulting in a deliciously fresh shrimp that goes from swimming to harvest in as little as four hours.”
In addition to the new products, Samuels and Son also carries Hawaiian Kanpachi, Skuna Bay Salmon, Open Blue Cobia, Blu Crab crab meat, Viking Village scallops, Texas Gold shrimp, and a variety of products caught in the East Atlantic, including John Dory, scorpionfish, strawberry grouper, and rouget from Les Grande Viviers.
Bradford said Samuels and Son was taking a higher-profile approach to Seafood Expo North America this year because the company has so much to talk about.
“We want people to see these new products and ask questions about them. And we want them to ask our people about our growth,” he said. “We want them to know about the growing opportunities they have if they’re a customer of ours – the potential they have by being on our customer list. The same goes with our vendors.”
D'Angelo said he was excited to showcase the new product offerings and talk to both old customers and potential new ones about the company's expanded geographic range at the expo.
"This year will be something special," he said.
Samuels and Son Seafood is exhibiting at Booth #2233 at Seafood Expo North America.
