Daily Sitka Sentinel

Sitka Seafood Firm Expands Midwest Marketing

By ABIGAIL BLISS

Sentinel Staff Writer

A Sitka-based seafood company has found a new foothold in the landlocked Midwest.

Sitka Salmon Shares, a small business founded in 2011 to get Alaskan fish to Midwestern tables, has secured a spot at a new marketing hub under development in Madison, Wisconsin.

Workers process salmon for Sitka Salmon Shares at their Smith Street plant in 2017. (Photo provided to the Sentinel)

Nicolaas Mink, president and chief salmon steward, explained that the new facility will house the company’s distribution, packaging, marketing, and retail functions, easing the strain on its country-spanning “boat-to-table” model and enabling “on the ground marketing” in the region.

“We’ve always marketed our fish in the Midwest,” Mink said. “We’ve always believed that there’s a lot of opportunity to sell traceable, sustainable Alaska seafood in the Midwest, and this expansion is only going to make it easier.”

The new facility will be located in an historic Wisconsin landmark, the Garver Feed Mill, that will house a number of other food-related businesses after a revitalization project, now under way, is completed.

Sitka Salmon Shares has a 10,000-square-foot processing plant on Smith Street, and two “Good-Fish Hubs” in the Midwest. Even as the company expands its reach in Wisconsin, its primary processing, purchasing, buying, and freezing functions will remain in Sitka, Mink said.

The company was founded in 2011, but Mink reported that it wasn’t until 2014 that the endeavor really took off, as its team of fishermen-owners adapted to meet increasing demand in Wisconsin and Minnesota. 

The company now serves 100 wholesale partners and 5,000 consumers through its “Community Supported Fishery,” in which members receive a monthly box of seafood.

“It’s about keeping up with demand more than anything,” Mink explained. “People tasted Sitka fish, and they tell their friends, and they order more, and they order again ... It’s a testament to the amazing abundant natural resources in Sitka and the hard work of our fisherman-owners.”

He anticipates more of the same trend moving forward and has set his sights on doubling the size of Sitka Salmon Shares’ fishing fleet from its current 20 boats to 40 boats by 2019.

He expressed gratitude for having snagged a spot at Madison’s historic Garver Feed Mill, which has played a central role in the city’s food industry for more than a century.

Built in 1906 as a sugar beet processing facility, the building was transformed into a feed mill and granary in the early 1930s and remained in that function for 66 years. Since 1997, however, the landmark, once an emblem of the area’s industry, has stood vacant.

It was revived from its dormant state in 2015, when the city asked developer Baum Revision to revitalize the building and grounds as a nexus of local foodies and food producers. In its new incarnation the Garver Feed Mill will house local businesses marketing products such as coffee, kombucha, ice cream, and, of course, fish.

“The Garver Feed Mill has always been really central to the Midwest’s food story,” Mink said. “It’s exciting that our fish, Alaskan fish, can play an important role with that.”