Four Star Seafood expands after seeing success with its chef-curated seafood distribution

“I think part of our goal now is to prove that we’ve built something that’s scalable."
Adrian Hoffman and Ismael Macias posing with large salmon in each hand
Adrian Hoffman and Ismael Macias, co-founders of Four Star Seafood, are expanding the business after seeing success with their seafood distribution model | Photo courtesy of Four Star Seafood
6 Min

Just over a decade ago, Adrian Hoffman ate a seafood meal that set him on the path to creating what would become Four Star Seafood, a successful seafood distribution business that recently expanded on the West Coast of the U.S. 

Originally a chef by trade, Hoffman and his business partner Ismael Macias met working together at high-end restaurants in San Francisco, California. After becoming friends, they both left the company they worked for in 2014 and set out on new journeys – with Hoffman doing consulting and Macias working at restaurants across the world. 

“He came back from his sojourn, and we were talking; I wasn’t really digging consulting very much,” Hoffman told SeafoodSource. “I had always had this idea about getting into the seafood business.”

The catalyst for that idea was a seafood meal in Portugal, which set a new high bar for freshness in Hoffman’s mind.

“It was like the best seafood I’d ever had in my life. I came back, and I could spend whatever I wanted on seafood, but I couldn’t get anything close to the quality of what I got when I was there,” Hoffman said. “It didn’t make sense to me because here I am in San Fransisco and there’s commercial fishing ports and plenty of great seafood right off the coast, and nobody is bringing me anything that, no matter what I spend for it, that’s of the quality that I had there.”

Hoffman and Macias talked about that discrepancy and began doing some homework.

“We went down to Pillar Point at Half Moon Bay and started walking the piers and talking to fishermen, shaking hands, and we saw them with this amazing fish that they just brought in,” Hoffman said.

Hoffman said that was the point they learned more about the seafood supply chain and about how there may be several links on the chain between the fisherman and the final customer – which sparked the idea to create Four Star Seafood in 2015.

“So the idea was, very simply, we ...


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