SeaFood Business

MAY 2014

SeaFood Business is the global trusted authority for seafood buyers and sellers. We are the seafood industry's leading trade magazine with more than 30 years of experience. Our coverage is based on the "business" of buying and selling seafood.

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32 SeaFood Business May 2014 Visit us online at www.seafoodbusiness.com What's in Store Continued from page 26 Behind the Line Continued from page 28 example, costs $45, "which is arguably the best deal for sushi in New York City," he says. "My goal is to teach and explain, which is why I ofer lower-priced options for people my age who want to try sushi, but can't aford to spend $150 on omakase." His unconventional path to sushi puts him in a league of his own when it comes to edu- cating diners. "People don't fnd me intimi- dating, they trust me and feel they can ask questions," he says. Most often he is asked about where the fsh he serves come from, whether it arrives whole or flleted and how he got into the business of sushi. "Because I'm Amer- ican, diners fnd me approachable, identify with me and listen to me," he says. "Tere's a huge boom in sushi in New York City. Hope- fully I'm the one who will be able to shed light on this cuisine and help bring it to a new level." Contributing Editor Lauren Kramer lives in Richmond, British Columbia of landing or farm." Food Lion commu- nicates the policy with its shoppers via fyers and in-store signage in all sections. Te retailer's seafood sustainability eforts are a smart marketing move, says Jim Hertel, managing partner at retail consulting frm Willard Bishop. "Tere is a signifcant minor- ity (about 20 percent) of shoppers who have adopted a lifestyle of health and sustainabil- ity. Tese consumers will make purchas- ing decisions based on their values, and they crave information and transparency before they buy." It remains to be seen whether Food Lion's seafood initiatives and "easy, fresh and aford- able" format will pay of for the chain over the long term, but the retailer is now keeping pace with grocery retail- ing trends. Walmart, for example, is roll- ing out smaller-format stores featuring aford- able and convenient foods across the nation, and other supermarket chains have launched scaled-down versions of their traditional stores. Plus, communicat- ing a sustainable sea- food policy with shop- pers led to increased fresh and frozen sea- food sales for leading retailers like Safeway, Wegmans and Whole Foods Market. Contributing Editor Christine Blank lives in Lake Mary, Fla. "Learning how to make sushi isn't something you can rush. I'm still on the learning curve, even after 10 years in the business." — David Boudahana, chef, Sushi Dojo Special Feature Networking Continued from page 36 Can pro sports players and leagues do more to encourage kids to not only exercise but also to eat properly? I just saw LeBron James doing a McDon- ald's commercial, and Chris Weber doing one for Burger King. If you're 28 and still put- ting Big Macs in your diet … the seafood industry is quite a bit behind in marketing dollars and lobbying. It's tough competing against the big boys. But long term, we can slowly increase the percentage of people who eat seafood. And studies will show how benefcial it is to us as a society. Former hoops star Detlef Schrempf now runs a charity for kids. fsh is headed and gut- ted, parts of it may be sent to the freezer, or put into processing to create diferent skin-on and skin-of products. "If a customer calls back and says I have a problem with an 8-ounce portion, the supplier can track it backward and say that came from this lot of fsh that came of this boat on that day and see all the places the prod- uct went," says Levy. "Tey can recall all that product very quickly." Earlier this year, CFO Lou Tarnowski of scallop supplier Eastern Fisheries in New Bedford, Mass., credited the Seasoft program for helping his company achieve British Retail Consor- tium certifcation. It is one of the recognized schemes following Global Food Safety Initiative standards required for suppliers doing business with many of the world's major retailers like Walmart and Costco. Flexibility is also helpful for tracking seafood's variations. Open Systems in Sha- kopee, Minn., produc- es TR AVERSE, a SQL database in Microsoft's .NET (pronounced "dot net") framework. Te .NET system al- lows users to create their own views and felds, and to upgrade the software without a programmer and with- out losing previous customizations. Te system also boasts ac- cessibility for smaller seafood frms because Seafood's many product forms make traceability complex. it can be scaled down for companies with as few as three users. "What TRAVERSE does for the seafood company is to al- low them to track all kinds of information that might not be in a wholesale distribution package," says Ed Bend- er, executive business consultant VP for Open Systems. "We can track for seafood's country of origin, we can track catch weight, we can track selling by case and billing by the pound. No matter how we enter that case of fsh, wheth- er it be weighed in kilo- grams, whether it be in pounds, quickly the sys- tem handles conversion on the fy." Working with Hous- ton seafood distributor Shantou Ocean King Aquatic Food Products LLC, Open Systems recently implemented a feature called Task Pane. It makes it pos- sible for users to have all of that information without exiting the part of the program they're working in. Contact Assistant Editor Melissa Wood at mwood@divcom.com 26_WIS_28BTL_30SF_32Jump_36Networking.indd 32 4/16/14 9:30 AM

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