With Americans shifting their seafood buying from restaurants to grocery stores as a result of the coronavirus outbreak, True World Foods CEO Robert Bleu told SeafoodSource his company’s orders are down between 30 and 80 percent.
Rockleigh, New Jersey-based True World Group is a supplier of seafood and other products to Asian markets and sushi restaurants. The company employs 1,500 workers in six countries, though its primary market is the United States.
“Orders are down maybe by two-thirds,” Bleu said. “San Francisco has been a big drop. New York has been hit hard, Seattle has been hit hard. Those were [COVID-19] hotspots where restaurants were shut down early. Denver is doing OK – or I should say the least bad – its down around 30 percent.”
Bleu said the company’s European business in the United Kingdom and Spain has been particularly hard.
“Restaurants are trying to adapt. Many are facing government orders banning seated service. They’re doing more take-out, but it seems that there’s less take-out [being ordered] than there was [pre-coronavirus]. And there are now a lot more restaurants fighting for that smaller share. We’re hearing demand is down even for places that were really strong on take-out, and if you weren’t doing take-out already, you’re likely not doing any increased business,” Bleu said.
In response, True World Foods is now distributing less often and has frozen “a bunch” of its fish, Bleu said.
“When a lot of these [restaurant] closure orders came through, we very quickly found out we had way too much inventory, so we froze a lot of it and we’re waiting until we can find a place to sell that,” he said. “We’re shrinking to meet the demand. We haven’t laid anyone off, but with the new demand [levels], this is tough for us.”
Smaller portions of its business – namely, its supply to Asian markets and its own retail locations in the Detroit, Michigan area – are doing well, but that has been nullified by its loss of sales of super-premium “elite-quality” items, such as tuna exported from the Toyosu Fish Market in Tokyo, Japan, Bleu said.
“We’re historically the largest exporter out of Toyosu to the U.S., but that business has stopped for right now,” he said. “For take-out, people aren’t doing that kind of stuff. They’ve shifted to simpler, less sophisticated menus.”
Bleu said he’s very concerned about the survival of his customer base and said he supports legislation to help out the base of primarily small businesses that run the sushi shops that True World supplies.
“It is no question a big hit for the mom-and-pop restaurants that make up the bulk of our customers. We’re worried if they can all survive. I’m hopeful the government puts some infrastructure in place that supports these businesses. The average restaurant owner we supply is living off a mortgaged house. They don’t have the financial base to weather something like this,” Bleu said. “We’re trying to take good care of our restaurant customers. We have a long history with many of them. Most of them are very good operators and they’re getting hit hard by something that is in no way their fault.”
