Branded Bristol Bay Sockeye Fillets Hit Markets & Make Waves at Boston Seafood Show

Over the past six years, BBRSDA has developed a powerful brand image for Bristol Bay sockeye. This logo and the accompanying point-of-sale materials have helped give chilled fillets a bigger callout (and boosted sales) in thousands of crowded grocery stores across North America, but the brand has been less connected to frozen fillets. Until now.

Alaskan Leader Seafoods Keith Singleton approached BBRSDA last fall about developing a new frozen fillet SKU and opted to use the Bristol Bay Sockeye Salmon brand instead of their own for a whole, vac-pack side. Singleton is the President of Alaskan Leaders’ Value-Added Division and a long-time Bristol Bay gillnetter.

The new product features an attractive window highlighting sockeye’s ruby-red color, prominent identification of the Bristol Bay origin, and a QR code which connects consumers to fishermen by bringing them to our Know Your Fisherman webpage.

These Bristol Bay Sockeye Salmon fillets are being carried in Costco Business Center outlets across the country, and are available online. Alaskan Leader also pulled out all the marketing stops in Boston, sampling the sockeye product at their booth to the +19,000 attendees and advertising the product on the marquee at the main entrance. This created huge exposure for all Bristol Bay sockeye salmon products as the Bay made a big splash at the recent Seafood Expo North America show in Boston, MA. The Boston SENA show is North America’s largest seafood trade show featuring +1,000 exhibitors from 49 countries, and draws the industry’s biggest buyers and sellers.

The Bristol Bay SENA buzz was punctuated with an exciting win by Thunder’s Catch for their Smoked Alaskan Sockeye Chowder in the prestigious Seafood Excellence contest for best new retail product. This contest featured 71 entrants from the biggest names in seafood. Peter Pan was also a finalist in the contest for their “Wild-Caught Alaska Sockeye Salmon with Kelp Chimichurri.” Thunder’s Catch previously won the Bristol Bay Choice and Juneau People’s Choice awards in the Alaska Symphony of Seafood contest for new products, which is heavily sponsored by BBRSDA to encourage product development for sockeye products.

All of these efforts are part of BBRSDA’s ongoing work to build long-term demand, expand the number of sales channels, and find markets for last year’s large harvest. The more places selling Bristol Bay sockeye salmon and the more consumers enjoying it creates more demand for the raw material caught by hard-working fishermen.