Ilya Shestakov, the head of Russia’s Federal Agency for Fisheries, has proposed organizing seasonal fish festivals to help promote seafood products – in particular, those in lesser demand.
Shestakov voiced his proposal at a meeting with representatives of the Federation of Caterers and Hoteliers of Russia in late April. His idea is to hold four festivals a year at restaurants around the country, timed with the harvest of the species to be promoted, which include pollock, herring, plaice, cod, capelin, halibut, iwashi, grenadier, and greenling.
“The primary promotion channel must be restaurants,” Shestakov said. “Owners and managers of restaurants find the idea good, but point out at problems with sustainable supply of fish.”
The idea is not entirely new. Since 2015, the agency has been conducting the festival Fish Week and a series of smaller seafood-themed events. The first Fish Week took place in Moscow in 2015 and subsequent versions took place in 2016 in Moscow and St. Petersburg and in Kazan in 2017. In Moscow, five million and six million visitors attended the festival in 2015 and 2016 respectively, which is almost half the city’s population. More than 400 metric tons (MT) of seafood was sold, with St. Petersburg and Kazan sales totaling more than 300 MT.
“Russian consumers learned that we have more kinds of salmon, not only humpback salmon and Siberian salmon,” Shestakov said. “Now we want to create a system to promote new Russia seafood products.”
Shestakov said he is sure restaurants are the best channel for getting fish marketed “as a restaurant is a place where a client can taste and value a seafood product immediately.”
The restaurant owners and managers attending the meeting responded to Shestakov’s proposal, but said they are struggling with a lack of stability in supplies and prices, the TASS news agency reported. Arkady Novikov, one of the biggest restaurateurs in Russia, said he opened a restaurant with a focus on the fish from the Far East region, but was not able to organize consistent supplies of seafood. He now serves Pan-Asian cuisine instead.
Shestakov and the representatives of the association said the proposal for seasonal seafood festivals is being planned that that further details would be forthcoming in the new few months.
