Over 25 years ago, a decision to try a piece of whitefish led Michael DellaGrotta to the career he never knew he’d have.
DellaGrotta, the president of Della Mar, has imported Patagonian toothfish – known in the U.S. more commonly as Chilean sea bass – since the 1990s. Up until an encounter at Seafood Expo North America, however, he barely knew what the species was.
“I’ll never forget, they came to the seafood show, and they wanted me to buy this whitefish; they said they had two or three containers,” DellaGrotta told SeafoodSource.
At the time, DellaGrotta was at the show with Kendell Seafood – a name derived from combining the company name DB Kenney Fisheries and DellaGrotta’s last name. DellaGrotta said at the time, he was selling scallops from Canada with DB Kenney as a partner.
The people in question trying to sell the whitefish were selling Patagonian toothfish, and after some consternation, DellaGrotta decided to give the species a shot.
“I’ll never forget, one of the gentlemen who ran one of the boats at the time, I went and knocked on his hotel room door at 7 in the morning, and I said, ‘I can do it; I want to buy one container,’” DellaGrotta said. “By the end of the show, I knocked on his door said, ‘I need two more containers.’ I didn’t know if I would sell them yet, but I had an idea.”
DellaGrotta said that decision took on new context after he tried the fish himself.
“I took some home and cooked a sample in my kitchen by myself,” DellaGrotta said.
Eventually, he got distracted by his chocolate lab Coco and lost track of time – with the fish still in the oven.
“I said, ‘Oh no, this is way overcooked.’ Then, after I ate it, I said, ‘Wow, this is perfect – it’s the best fish I’ve ever eaten,’” DellaGrotta said.
Coco approved, too, after getting a piece.
“I’ll never forget Coco’s expression on her face when I handed her a piece of Chilean sea bass; after the way she ate it I knew it was special,” DellaGrotta said. “From that point on, I was sold.”
While DellaGrotta was sold, selling the species to everyone else was easier said than done. DellaGrotta said at the time, the species was still making inroads and wasn’t as universally known as it is today.
Its popularity only began to take off in the 1990s, and it wasn’t until 1994 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recognized the name Chilean sea bass as an alternative – and more appealing – name for Patagonian toothfish.
In the early days of DellaGrotta’s attempts, the popularity wasn’t quite there yet, he said.
“I did my best as a young businessman with a few children, trying to raise a family and bring a new species to my customer base who were buying scallops,” DellaGrotta said.
He kept at it on a hunch that the species could serve a similar role to black cod – which was frequently selling for as much as double the price per pound Patagonian toothfish was selling for. At the time, however, black cod had a relatively limited supply, whereas Patagonian toothfish had plenty of biomass.
That meant DellaGrotta built up some inventory in cold storage after personally financing it in his quest to develop a market for the fish.
“It wasn’t moving as fast as I would like. Boat owners came to a point where they couldn’t send me more product unless they helped me financially,” DellaGrotta said.
DellaGrotta credits those owners with keeping his efforts alive by fronting him the product and trusting him to pay them when he sold the fish.
DellaGrotta said that trust has been a central part of the business philosophy he lives by. One way he demonstrated that to boat owners early on was properly calibrating and tracking weights and measures on all the product he took in – to make sure everyone selling him product got their fair share.
“This is me going to cold storages in New Jersey, eyeing scales, unloading fish, and showing how to calibrate each weight,” he said. “Then, I would report back to a boat owner and say, ‘You have 4,000 extra pounds here.’ I can remember the face of the first boat owners.”
DellaGrotta said that helped build trust, and word of mouth spread.
“That was the trust between the original boat owners and me; that was the reason this project worked,” he said.
Eventually, their trust paid off. DellaGrotta said he developed the “Kendell Platinum” brand, which helped with marketing the product, and sales slowly crept up to the point the company became a major percentage of the U.S.’s Patagonian toothfish imports.
“There was a run for a lot of years where I was a big percentage,” DellaGrotta said. “There was a connection between the word Kendell and Chilean sea bass; we did deals with all the big names in seafood and private labels. It was a tremendous run.”
Since that time, business has slowed down. The Covid-19 pandemic had a huge impact on the industry, causing a 95 percent drop in business, according to DellaGrotta, who has since been through lawsuits that at times involved courts to settle the fallout.
Now, he’s operating under Della Mar and selling seafood once again, but he said his real goal all along has never been related to the money; its been about the relationships he built through his business.
“If there’s a circle of people and my name comes up, it’s important to me that everybody smiles because no one’s going to remember me for the money I made. No one is going to remember me for the product I tried to help bring to market in the U.S.,” DellaGrotta said. “They’re going to remember my character and my friendship.”
