Megan Grinstead is director of marketing at SeaPak Shrimp & Seafood, based in Saint Simon's Island, Georgia. SeaPak has been offering shrimp and seafood for nearly 70 years and the company currently produces the top-selling retail frozen shrimp brand within the specialty seafood category.
SeafoodSource: What are the core business strategies or principles that have been the foundation of SeaPak?
Grinstead: Thanks to our decades of industry expertise, we’re well known for the care and attention we put toward selecting only the best-tasting, highest-quality seafood for our products. We’re proud of our coastal heritage and the fact that the SeaPak brand is highly regarded within the seafood industry for its adherence to quality standards and for its commitment to resource management and sustainability. Those tenets have been among the keys to success since SeaPak’s earliest days.
SeafoodSource: Everyone is trying to court the millennial shopper. How does SeaPak view this demographic and how will you position or alter your product mix or marketing message to capture millennials?
Grinstead: As the millennial shopper continues to gain influence in the marketplace, we’re constantly adjusting and optimizing our marketing strategies to stay in tune with this audience. Of course, we also understand that different segments exist within the millennial demographic, so we’re regularly testing our marketing tactics and targeted campaigns to see what resonates best with various shopper profiles. For example, now that we’re seeing significant growth in the millennial family segment, we’re listening intently to that subsection of shoppers and closely monitoring the evolution of their lifestyle habits.
SeafoodSource: What is your company’s goal for the new year?
Grinstead: The obvious goal is to sell more seafood, but, in order to do so, we need to find new ways to increase the consumer’s comfort with purchasing and trying seafood more often. This coming year, we’ll be focused on advancing and evolving the consumer’s existing seafood mindset, largely by spreading the word about seafood’s great health benefits and the fact that it is a smart protein. As always, we’ll continue to provide delicious, quick and easy seafood solutions that help minimize stress and make meal-time more fun for families.
SeafoodSource: What do you consider to be your company’s biggest business challenge currently and what is the strategy for tackling it?
Grinstead: With so much noise in the marketplace surrounding different proteins and center-of-the-plate options, it can be challenging to keep seafood top-of-mind with consumers. At SeaPak, we work hard to understand what motivates our consumers when they’re planning their next seafood purchases. This leads us to solutions that align with consumer needs and also helps us identify additional opportunities tied to usage occasions that already exist within our consumers’ everyday lives.
SeafoodSource: On the achievement side, what do you consider to be SeaPak’s greatest achievement thus far and why?
Grinstead: Due to market fluctuations related specifically to commodity pricing, the brand in recent years has often been faced with some tough decision-making. In each instance, however, we’ve never wavered on taste, quality or value for our products. Ultimately, we believe our decisions so far have been the best long-term investments we could make, especially in terms of perpetuating consumer loyalty and trust.
