Sainsbury’s, Yo! Sushi and Morrison’s are among the major retailers and restaurant chains taking part in Seafish’s annual Seafood Week, which kicks of 9 October.
Festivities and promotions encouraging consumers to eat more seafood more often will be held throughout the United Kingdom through 16 October. “The national celebration seeks to highlight the abundance of delicious, fresh seafood on offer across the U.K. and aims to get the British public excited about experimenting with seafood at home and exploring new tastes when they visit their favorite restaurant or takeaway,” said Chris Middleton, head of communications and marketing at Seafish.
To highlight the versatility of seafood, each day will focus on a different type of seafood following the theme of “Cook Me, Buy Me, Dine Me.” Seafood Week aims to demonstrate that “if you’re prepared to have your taste buds tickled, there’s an abundance of seafood to suit all different tastes, lifestyles and budgets,” according to Seafish.
Morrison’s, The Co-operative, Sainsbury’s and Aldi will be offering in-store offers and on-pack promotions for the event, along with digital advertising and social media support. Special Seafood Week stickers already adorn seafood products in some major supermarkets, and a downloadable industry toolkit has been made available.
“Our fishmongers will be promoting in-store with a rage of nice materials and we even have mobile mongers geared up to drive the message across the U.K.,” said Mel Groundsell, corporate relations director at Seafish.
Restaurant chains, including Loch Fyne, Hotel du Vin and Yo! Sushi, along with a number of fish and chip shops are also running a range of promotions throughout the week. Overall, more than 100 individual businesses representing 800 locations are taking part in Seafood Week. “We have distributed promotional packs to 7,500 fish and chips shops – that’s quite some noise to be making,” Groundsell said.
To kick the week off on 9 October, the Twitterverse will have its funny bone tickled as #fishpunday drops in the U.K. “We’re delighted to have the support of Darren Walsh, winner of ‘Best Joke’ at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival on this matter, who has helped us to work up some wonderful (and pretty awful) puns to kick things off. We want everyone to get involved on Twitter using #fishpunday and #seafoodweek,” Groundsell said.
Since Seafood Week hasn’t been held since 2007, Seafish executives wanted to bring the campaign back this year, as part of its three-year plan. “We’ve set ourselves a tough target to meet with a promise to get ‘more people eating more fish more often.’ As a small organization with a very limited budget, we recognize that we can’t achieve the change we want if we work alone. We know that if we’re going to have any chance of delivering that outcome, we’re going to need the help of a lot of friends – and thus we had the perfect opportunity to reintroduce Seafood Week,” Groundsell said.
The downloadable toolkit and other information for Seafood Week is available at www.seafoodweek.co.uk.
