This slow-burn seafood company is ready to grab a slice of the $3.5 billion US snack market

Seafood snacking company Pescavore has entered a particularly challenging space for the industry: the US jerky arena.

The $3.5 billion (€3.2 billion) meat snack industry is a "behemoth" when it comes to a growth category at retail, Owens explained, with companies like Slim Jim, Jack Link's, and Oberto dominating the market.

The seafood jerky portion of the business is much smaller, however, and lacks an established leader. Trident Seafoods sells its salmon jerky through Costco on a seasonal basis. Others in the category include VitaChoice and Fishpeople, which both offer salmon jerky, and Neptune Snacks, which markets jerky made from Alaska pollock.

The research and development of tuna jerky as well as the commercialization phase has been several years in the works for the company, with Owens noting the challenges behind making the jerky shelf-stable, and also getting US consumers to accept it.

The idea for Pescavore started around 2012, when Owens and her husband visited Micronesia and learned about the sticks of fish produced by Marshallese fishing families. Her husband, Matthew Owens, a co-founder of the company, is also the former managing director of the nonprofit Fishwise.

Since its founding, the company has focused intensively on improving the quality of fish in jerky form, she said.

Owens said Pescavore has created solutions to keep the jerky from drying out in fish form while it remains conveniently packaged, a point that is attracting retailers to the brand.

Pescavore officially entered the commercial market in September 2018 with three flavors of the jerky that included Island Teriyaki, Caribbean Jerk, and Smokey Poke. Since that time, it has grown from being available at 120 largely US West Coast-based retailers to around 1,000 today, according to Owens.

At the time of its launch, the company was working with a small local co-packer in the Pacific Northwest. The company purchased a property in Santa Cruz in 2016 to turn into its own manufacturing facility but the facility was still a ways away from becoming operational.

"It took us several years to put together capital partnerships and develop a supply chain to be housed in the United States," she said, noting that co-packing facilities in the United States and Canada have aging infrastructure and were problematic when it came to implementing the company's jerky-making technology.

With the support of angel investors, supply chain strategics and early-stage venture capital led by Luke Walton's impact platform Builders Vision, as well Community Vision, a Northern California community development finance institution, the California Fisheries Fund and the California Infrastructure and Economic Development Bank, Pescavore was able to complete its 5,000 square foot facility, which opened last year.

The company's funding from various investors has so far totaled $5 million (€4.5 million), she said.

Ready to scale

In addition to being available at select US Safeway stores, Pescavore has recently expanded its reach to Target.

Earlier this month, its jerky launched into 106 Target stores, mostly in Northern California. Owens said she worked with Target Takeoff, an accelerator program for more mature consumer packaged goods companies that want to learn how to scale into mass retail.

In the fall, Owens added Pescavore will be launching in some REI retail locations throughout the country as the company continues to hone in on the US snack market.

"We're ready to scale nationally," Owens said of the company's future plans. "We're on the venture track," she added, noting the company is actively looking for more capital partners that bring "strategic value."