While Santa Monica Seafood, Pike Place Fish Market and other western U.S. suppliers have been working with AmazonFresh for a few years, East Coast suppliers are now coming on board as Amazon expands the delivery service to major metro markets. Since it began working with AmazonFresh earlier this year, Philadelphia, Penn.-based Samuels and Son Seafood has realized a steady increase in fresh seafood orders from the fresh delivery service.
SeafoodSource recently talked to Joe Lasprogata, vice president of Samuels and Son, about what it’s like to work with AmazonFresh – along with other new initiatives from the company.
Blank: How is the AmazonFresh partnership working out? How many products are you selling via the service?
Lasprogata: Dealing with a company like Amazon, there was an extensive test period before they went live. We started at the beginning of the year and are in the Manhattan and Philadelphia markets. Amazon is very careful with expansion; they [increase territory] zip code by zip code. We have a number of people working on the web site and they also process orders. The orders are extremely specific, so it is really a to-order type of situation. We have over 80 products available to them and over 30 that are active. The benefit is that we are working off of our normal product line.
Blank: What are the company’s AmazonFresh sales like?
Lasprogata: It’s certainly a viable business, but there is not a lot of additional revenue yet, with the investment in equipment [and other expenses]. The volume is not there yet. We have about 20 or 30 orders a day in Manhattan and it’s about the same in Philadelphia.
Blank: Samuels and Son has certainly grown in recent years. Where are your primary markets and customers?
Lasprogata: Philadelphia is our headquarters, and then we distribute north into Manhattan including southern Connecticut, West of Pittsburgh, south to northern Virginia, and all along the Atlantic beaches in between. We also have a division in Las Vegas. We deliver to white tablecloth restaurants, hotels, sushi bars and other restaurants. We also deliver to supermarkets; our biggest chains are Acme Markets and Weis Markets. Since the time we have partnered with them, we have helped them resurrect their fresh fish programs. Volumes are up, especially as people are steering away from some other proteins and are eating more chicken and fish.
Blank: Samuels and Son is very active on social media and has aggressive marketing and education programs. Why are those programs so important?
Lasprogata: We have our own marketing department with five people. Whether it is Copper River salmon, soft shell crab, stone crabs or anything else, each product we handle has such a unique story. You get into sustainability and the environment, and where it comes from. We do cut sheets on every product we have, so people can not only learn about product themselves, but also share it with it their wait staff and end users. A lot of our customers can’t properly cut salmon, for example. We not only provide information on how to do it, but we invite them in so they can learn. We do education events on our own or bring in vendors to our test kitchen.
