Raw Seafoods readies big retail push

The staff of Massachusetts-based supplier Raw Seafoods includes all of the usual positions: company president, sales and marketing managers, CFO and the like.

It also includes six Johnson & Wales University graduate chefs, and that’s critically important for Raw Seafoods as it continues to transform itself from a single-product seafood supplier to a branded, value-added company.

Company co-founder Scott Hutchens said this chef-driven approach is key to building and expanding its J.Scott Foods brand of value-added products.

The company made news recently with the hire of several execs that are being tasked, in part, with taking the J.Scott Foods brand deeper into US retail channels.

Former High Liner Foods exec Jim LaBelle was named vice president of Marketing and Program Development. Mark Ross, formerly of Trans-Ocean Products, has been hired to lead the company's retail sales efforts. Veteran seafood buyer Tom Vasile will direct the company’s international procurement, and Paul Neves, will manage the company’s scallops division.

“Our growth plan, for which Jim has come onboard, Mark has come onboard and Tom has come onboard, is to increase the sales in our value-added products, as well as our internationally sourced commodity products. With that being said, we’re not losing focus on our core product, fresh and frozen scallops,” said Hutchens.

The transformation of the company crossed a milestone last year, when the percentage of company sales from scallops fell below 50 percent for the first time, demonstrating the growth of other segments of the business.

“That being said, we increased our scallop sales overall versus 2014, however the growth we had in our commodity portion programs as well as the value-added appetizers, seafood burgers and marinated and seasoned fillets has just been tremendous,” said Hutchens.

The company derives roughly 60 percent of its sales from retail and the remainder from foodservice. And it is in the retail sector where Raw Seafoods is about to make its biggest move in the coming months.

“We’re going to have a formal launch of the J.Scott Foods brand in retail packaging. That’s a brand we’ve been using in club stores and a few retailers, and we’ve gotten a lot of exciting feedback on those items,” said LaBelle.

The brand actually was developed a couple years ago for club store sales – Costco, Sam’s and BJ’s – but now the company is poised to take the brand to more traditional retail customers.

“The J.Scott Foods brand,” said LaBelle, “represents what we believe will be the best value-added seafood in the market -- all natural, no additives, no preservatives.”

All of the company’s products are produced in its 80,000-square-foot plant in Fall River, Massachusetts. The facility is USDA, FDA, and MSC certified, and has achieved the advanced BRC "AA" rating.

"There are very few seafood manufacturers that we’re aware of that have earned that BRC 'AA' certification level, and that’s something that sets up apart from the competition," said LaBelle.

The path to building a successful seafood company, let alone a thriving brand, can be meandering and disorienting. But limiting a company to a single product also has plenty of risk, as Hutchens and his co-founder brother Jason realized several years ago.

“We didn’t want to grow our business being a one-product company,” said Hutchens. “We felt that would be a bad strategic move long-term and the need to diversify within our core capabilities – seafood products that we could add value to – made sense and would give us a more stable platform for future growth.”

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