Depending on where one lives in the United States, the glut of Copper River salmon this year means lower prices.
With more than 781,000 pounds of salmon — 760,000 pounds of it sockeye — pulled from the Copper River since the start of the fishing season in mid-May, suppliers say they have been able to satisfy demand from traditional customers and expand into new markets.
“We’ve got some new customers, but I can’t tell if our new customers are truly new or if we put them out from some competitor, but we have found new customers who have been pretty big,” said an executive at one Seattle-based seafood company. “I think it's definitely expanded interest in other parts of the country besides the Northwest. We’ve had big interest in parts of the Southeast and Texas, much bigger than before.”
With so many fish so early — nearly 500,000 pounds were pulled in the first two openers — prices from processors were down by more than 50 percent one week into the season, said a buyer for one Pacific Northwest restaurant chain. Kings that normally start out at USD 17 a pound were going for USD 12 and sockeye that came in to Seattle on that first plane at USD 9.50 a pound dropped to USD 7 by the second opener and USD 4.75 a week into the season.
“The sockeye have bounced back up to between USD 5.50 and USD 5.75, so they've jumped up about a buck from that low,” said the restaurant buyer. “The last fishing period, which would have been (2 June), was pretty soft. I haven't looked at the numbers but the prices shot back up a little bit on the sockeyes and it’s been a little tough to get all our needs met.”
Because of the fluctuating prices, he says it was hard to react fast enough on menu pricing. “You still have a bunch of fish from the last opener at the higher price and, boom, more fish show up at USD 2, USD 3 less than what you paid just a few days before. It was really hard to adjust menu prices quick enough,” he said.
“But we are at a spot now on the menu — and I can't tell you what we are charging in the restaurants as we have 21 restaurants and I think depending on the demographics it might be different — but we’re at a place now where it seems to be working. We’re still selling a lot of sockeye even though we're a couple of weeks into this thing.
“Sometimes you see all the hype happen and you just get slammed the first week or so and it really falls off, people have had their Copper River fix for the year. But I think when these prices drop, the nice thing is people are coming back and continuing to eat it.”
Seattle-area retailers have been offering Copper River sockeye as low as USD 4.99 a pound, but these low prices seem to be confined to the Northwest, as retailers on the East Coast and Texas have been able to sell the same salmon for between USD 15 and USD 20 a pound, although some retailer promotions in those areas were dropping the prices.
“We’re not really seeing any different prices from last year,” said a chef at a Texas restaurant of one national chain. “We started out around USD 16, USD 17 for head-on gutted kings to about the USD 13 range for sockeye. We’re running about 30 pounds a week — the same as last year. There’s really not a whole lot more interest in it.
“A lot of grocery stores are hyping it up big time — the higher-end grocery stores in the suburbs are pushing it hard,” the chef says. “I was in (one store) and it had this huge display of the sockeyes right as you walked in the fish department and there was a guy sitting right there cutting fillets for you, whatever you wanted. You’re talking USD 18 a pound down here.”
One East Coast retailer has been able to pass on the lower prices to his customers, and was paying less than USD 10 a pound for sockeyes — they were more than USD 11 a pound at this time last year — and running a promotion that had them selling for USD 15.99 a pound.
“Every year I try to get that first salmon,” he said. “Last year I got caught; we thought it was fine and we didn’t get them and then we had to substitute kings when we promoted our Copper River. It's a coin toss. This year, it’s a plentiful year, and not only are they plentiful but they've come down so we can pass it along.”
The Seattle-area buyer finds it surprising people don’t wait until a few weeks after the start of the season to buy Copper River salmon, since it’s the same fish at lower prices. “This is what kind of surprises me that, after all these years the consumer hasn't figured that part out. Usually you get all the press when it's coming, but what happened was (a story came out) on the price of the Copper River salmon and how much it had dropped, so if people’s memories are good they’ll figure this happens every year. I tell friends — I don’t want to tell the whole world this — just wait a couple of weeks if you want to get Copper River salmon.
“It baffles me every year the first week is that crazy and we sell that many fish. It’s like people are just waiting for it to happen. A lot of people don’t eat salmon all winter long, even though we’ve had some nice Alaskan winter troll kings in the restaurants, you get all this hype and people say, ‘Oh wow I haven’t had a nice piece of salmon in four months or whatever.’”
