273: Fishwife

0:28This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. There were like two very, very, very broad demographics of people that when I told them I was starting a canned fish company, they got it. And it was either, you know, foodie people, trendy people, you know, people were getting bone app, etc. Or it was first generation Americans.

0:52This is Taste. I'm your host, Matt Rodbard.

0:59Today on the show, I welcome in Becca Milstein, the CEO and founder of Fishwife, one of my favorite brands in food. You probably have picked up her tins of salmon and mackerel and anchovies at Whole Foods or your favorite small food store. Well, we have Becca in to tell us all about the story of Fishwife, the founding of it, the early struggles, and really what it's like to run a small food brand in today's day and age, how she's duking it out online and offline. I really love catching up with Becca Milstein, and I hope you enjoy this conversation.

1:38Becca Milstein, welcome to This Is Taste. Oh, thank you, Matt. I'm so, so excited to be here. I love meeting you. I've had your products for years, it feels like, and you've been in my life. And I really want to get into Fish Wife and a bit of your story and your journey. But first, like, the question is, is, like, when did you realize tinned fish was such an opportunity? Yeah, it was really at the height of COVID. I think, like, the precursor when the seed was sown for Fish Wife was when I lived abroad in Spain. I was living in southern Spain in Granada and traveling almost exclusively around Andalusia.

2:12And then Portugal as well. And that's where I had my, you know, revelation that there is another tinned fish in the world. and it is much, much more delicious and much more artisanal and has such a beautiful culture around it than what I grew up eating. Than like Starkist? Than Starkist, which is all that I was familiar with. Yeah. Being from New Hampshire, you know, I grew up eating tuna fish sandwiches and that was the only use case that I was familiar with for a canned fish. So I had my eyes open then. And then, you know, five years went by and it was COVID. And I think I had just sensed in my peer group that there was a tremendous amount of interest in this category.

2:46I had started seeing friends like post on Instagram, like having these little tinfish moments. This is, again, during COVID when people are locked at home. Right, 2020, and it was like the Ortiz. It was like some of the imported brands from Portugal. Or it was like Trader Joe's. Oh, yeah. And I was like, there's got to be something. Not to like throw shade and they have some great products, but like. Oh, we can do that. Trader Joe's is not our friend on the show. Yeah, okay, great, great, great. So anyway, I was like, there's got to be something else out there. there really was not any American-owned, incredible tinfish brand that was high quality, you know, responsible sourcing, beautiful, above all, beautiful branding.

3:22Because that was my background. I was from, you know, I'd worked in the music industry doing brand partnerships, brand marketing. And that's really what I saw is, like, I looked at this, you know, pretty huge category. It's nearly a$6 billion category in the U.S. Just in the U.S. at six? Wow. Yes, almost six. It's like five something. but that had not experienced any premiumization and like over the past 10 years we've watched every single food vertical be premiumized and it's like why has this why has this one so six billy four is it mostly tuna though? it is it's like 80 % tuna 80 % tuna but then you think about like sardines like sardines have definitely been part of our culture I feel like you think about anchovies but you think and I don't want to say think this is like before Fish Wife and other brands have copied to kind of enter the space but like we were cooking with anchovies obviously in Italian cooking and some other Spanish cooking.

4:10But yeah, it didn't have the premienzation as you're talking about. And it didn't have like a community around it, which is what I think, which is why Fish Wave has experienced great organic growth is because, you know, I could feel that there was obsession around this category in a way that there's rarely, you know, people aren't like obsessed with like bread or cereal, but people are obsessed with tin fish. You know, not as many people as, you know, it started off as a smaller-ish audience, but like there was an obsession there. And that's really what you, what I personally was very attracted to as, you know, an aspiring founder.

4:46As a founder, but somebody who you're recognizing a real need for a rebranding or a facelift. But also in terms of the cost of goods and just like looking at the unit economics and looking at how you actually make money, I'm sure this is obviously a shelf-stable product. Is it a pretty good business then, the tinderfish business? It's a great business, but it's challenging. We started our manufacturing in North America. The canned fish infrastructure basically died out about 10 years ago completely. Like there used to be a robust, you know this, but like a robust canning industry, like a sardine canning industry on the Northeast.

5:23Like that feels like such a dream. It's so not the case. These days, there are probably like five canneries in mainland U.S. and probably, I don't know, a few more, 20 more in Alaska. Like I really don't know. But there's very limited canning infrastructure in the U.S. So it's expensive in North America. When you go outside in North America, the cost of production drops substantially. And sometimes you have to go and do that. But I want to just get into the sense of the seafood consumption in America. it's lower than the rest of the world. Yeah, I think there are a couple leading reasons for that.

6:01I think people in America, Americans are not intimately familiar with how to cook seafood. I think it's intimidating for people to think about how do I prepare this? Maybe salmon's easy, but then the rest it's like what the hell do I do with this fish? So, I mean, obviously one thing that is very exciting to me about canned fish is that the work is done by us. Yeah, so that's a great point because that's the unlock. It's like this fish is being made with a variety of flavor profiles and sauces. And it certainly isn't only for aperitivo or appetizers, though, that I love that as well. But like you can cook with it.

6:32So I guess how do you see our future? I mean, you must be banking on us like eating more seafood as a culture, right? I bank on people understanding that tin seafood makes it easier for them to eat more seafood, better seafood, more sustainable seafood, and broader varieties of seafood. Like how many people know how to cook a mackerel? Like it's not that hard, but most people are doing it every, you know, every week. So but can we make a gorgeous mackerel that they can just pop straight out of the tin? So, yes, I'm banking on I'm banking on a couple of things. I think I'm banking on my feeling is that we skipped over seafood and went straight to all proteins.

7:10And we've seen a reckoning in that space. Yeah. And as that reckoning is like really coming to a fore, I think the seafood movement, the tin seafood movement in particular, is just like really on the rise. God bless, Becca. I love that sentiment. I agree fully. I think they're all proteins. And we're talking about fake meat here. We're talking about those weird, you know, venture-backed companies. Got a lot of attention. And then here you are, you know, trucking along, just putting great fish into cans. Putting fish into cans. Like, it's really, it's putting fish, some extra red olive oil, some salt.

7:39Like, it's really that easy. No processing. And it's like, why? Why are we not? Why is not every American eating more of this stuff? Let me ask you, what was the first product? What was the first, like, you knew you had to launch this. this the first product was smoked albacore tuna from the pacific northwest um and that was a product of i mean when i was me building building supply chain in this category and like the evolution that our supply chain has been on it's fantastically funny and interesting but like i found a fisherman you know when i was starting the company i was like just trying to get in touch with anyone that knew anything about fishing so got in touch with a fisherman in northern california he connected me to a cannery in oregon and we created this um smoked albacore tuna which has It's been our product line for, yeah, almost three years.

8:18So that's an anchor. And just getting our listeners sense who have an experienced fishwife, you know, online or in great stores. What are you selling right now? We are selling. So it's the albacore tuna, smoked rainbow trout, smoked salmon, smoked salmon with fly-by-jink, Szechuan chili crisp. We just launched two gorgeous sardines. They're sourcing the only MSC-certified fishery in Europe, the Cornish fishery, and then packed in Galicia. And then our anchovies, which are on summer hiatus from our website because they can't ship in the high heat, but they are available across the country in Whole Foods.

8:53Where are the anchovies coming from? The anchovies are coming from northern Spain, Santonia, Spain. Amazing. Now, the name and the branding, honestly, I love that you just started. Like, I come from this background. I knew that we could give the branding. We could help Tin Fish in their branding category. So how did you kind of figure out this energy and mood? Because did it come to you in like fully formed, in a formed way or did it take a while to figure out? Because I'm thinking at the time it's like millennial pink. It's like it's very austere. It's very minimal. And like Fish Wife is not doing that.

9:30Yes. It was a very clear vision. So, like, I created a mood board that was a compilation of, like, the classic Spanish-Portuguese tinfish, which are, you know, just, like, these beautiful, bold, primary colors, like, simple, very evocative graphics. Like, there might be a character, like, a fisherman or a fishwife. And then there were a couple brand inspirations. There was Café Bustelo was very inspiring to me, Topo Chico. Those were kind of, like, the two main ones. So it was kind of this mix of, like, utilitarian but also very vibrant. and then Danny, our illustrator, Danbo Miller, I found through someone that I used to work with a lot in the music industry and I had surveyed a bunch of illustrators and like was testing them with, you know, friends and family but Danbo was the clear winner and like thank God because...

10:16Is he on staff now? He's on retainer and he's a part, you know, owns part of the company. Oh, cool. That's amazing. Yeah, I mean, he should. As he should. No, I totally agree. Yeah, he absolutely should. So, yeah, and he's like my just partner in fucking crime. There you go. You have to end your launching new skis all the time. And it sounds like you probably have an extreme demand for illustration from Danbo. He is working because it's the product, the packaging. But also we're doing so much, you know, merch and retail assets. And he's working his little tail off. But it's just been amazing to like watch his style evolve and his fishwife style.

10:51Like you can do so much, so versatile. But dude, he's your guy. And like we didn't even talk about beer. You just launched a beer. We launched a beer. That was such a blessing. So me and Danny, one of the other brands that we were inspired by was McKellar, the beer company from Copenhagen. Yes. So that was like, those are kind of like our three major brand modern inspirations. I love that. And we've just been like, oh, man, we need to do a beer. But like, how is Fishwife going to do a beer? And then Talaya reached out to us and so fun. I mean, it's like too much fun. So what's the actual beer in the can or in the bottle?

11:28It's a smoked lager. It has like some lemon in it. Yeah, it's honestly, I'm trying it for the first time tomorrow. I love it. I haven't tried it yet. I love that you haven't even tried it. I mean, that's like real talk about how fast these things move and also just like the way a founder has to operate. You can't just like scrutinize every decision. Oh, you cannot. I mean, like I trust these incredible people that are working at Talaya. It's like you need to know where to make a million decisions a day. You got to know where to pick your pick your battles. So, like, let's talk about 2021. Like, you've launched this product.

11:58You've sold a lot. You've, like, exploded on the scene. We love you as a founder. You know, you've got this incredible, like, these big ideas of disrupting food. But then in 2021, I read, and please correct me, this is incorrect, but, like, your distributor, your cannery, like, said, we can't can your fish. Yes, it was challenging. It was very challenging. But, you know, I mean, first of all, we all deal with that bullshit. I mean, all the time. Every founder has dealt with that. And honestly, in the grand scheme of things, it was the first year in business. You know, it was just I was the only employee like we were scrappy scrappy.

12:33And I think our audience knew that. So there was we had, you know, forgiveness. Like people understand. They probably don't extend. I don't understand the extent to which we're all just like hacking it together and like make just hustling to make it work. but people understood it um and thankfully i had started working with another cannery in washington on a different product and we were able to very quickly transit oh good so you didn't lose too many accounts from that that little bump in the road at that point we were still 90 d to c so it's also like yeah i think that's like very important for founders to keep in mind is like when you're d to c that stuff happens it's fine like it sucks because you're you know you want your consumer to trust you to be in stock but it's not the same story as when you're in you know 500 whole foods right and like the the big difference is d2c is like you really have a control of what your demand is and you really can cannot kind of almost can to order but then there's like the big costcos of the world and the whole foods and the albertsons who need like you know what a thousand oh my gosh what is that what kind of units do you work in how many units are they buying from us right now i mean i just deposited a check for their most recent order and let me tell you that was a lovely check to deposit yeah i'm like they're buying a shit ton of product so before we moved into like mainstream grocery, we locked up our supply chain to make sure it was limitless scalability.

13:49Like, yeah. That's great. Yeah. Now, when you say limitless scalability, this is a point I wanted to bring up in terms of the actual products in the ocean. We're talking about ocean or in the farms and you work with both and broad question, but how do you think about the actual fish and sustainability and keeping, you know, everyone happy, your consumers, your retailers, and then of course the world and the oceans. Yeah. I mean, first of all, it's really important for me to be working with both farms and wild fisheries. First of all, because they're products you simply cannot usually get on a commercial basis from, you know, wild sources like trout, for example.

14:27If you're eating trout from a grocery store at like 99.9, probably 100 % of the time you're eating farm-raised trout. Unless it's like the guy fly fishing in Jackson Hole for you. I mean, it's a great day for you. Great day for you. But yeah, I mean, I think we work with, you know, we right now partner with MSC and ASC and occasionally Fairtrade to work on developing our supply chains for the most part. So they have an amazing network of, you know, these incredible fisheries around the world or farms that they can put us in touch with. And then we start building supply chain from there. I see.

15:00Let me ask you about salmon and sardines. These are two products that, you know, came after the tuna. And, you know, let's talk about each. Like, how do you think about launching a new species? I mean, it's very different than tuna, I would imagine. I mean, we're constantly surveying our customers. And one of the things that we're obviously surveying them about regularly is what species they're most excited about, what flavor, you know, what flavor preparations, what form factors. So, I mean, for example, the anchovies had been, which we launched in January, had been like not even close, the most high demand product from us.

15:34And lo and behold, they are our best-selling SKU. And people just go absolutely cuckoo bananas for them, which I understand. They're amazing. But so sardines and salmon, they both came on pretty early in the business. I think sardines, you know, I started working on that right away at the beginning of the business. And I think the idea was just it originally was actually supposed to be a sardine company. The first thought was it's going to be a sardine company because sardines are this incredibly healthy, insanely high in calcium and protein. and they're just an undervalued, I don't know, undervalued fish, you know, low on the food chain, low mercury.

16:10And my perception at the time was sardines are the most sustainable option, which over time has become a much, much more nuanced understanding. And so that was the original conceit. And also like when people think about tin fish, high quality tin fish, like they're thinking the symbolism is sardines. So that was obvious. And then salmon, it's obviously top three most consumed, you know, seafood species. But usually not tinned. Not tinned. The tinned is extremely challenging. And Anna Hiesel, who wrote an amazing book on tinned fish and my former co-host, was early on tinned salmon and was like, this is underrepresented.

16:46Yes. That was one of the first pieces that was written about Fish Wife was Anna's piece about salmon. Yeah. And I think it's true. It's crazy how little—I mean, because there's canned—there's lovely, sustainable commodity wild-caught Alaskan salmon widely available on the market. Actually very popular in the southeast U.S. because it's used down there to make patties. It's like a very common recipe. Kind of blew my mind when I found that out. But high-quality smoked salmon, basically not available in any mainstream markets. Like Alaska, obviously, is the place where, you know, Alaska Pacific Northwest is where that was born.

17:20But the smoked, I mean, obviously, we've taken such a smoked-forward approach. And the reality is it's really hard to find canneries that have smokehouses, especially outside of like in Europe where so much of the high quality canned fish, you know, canning is happening. They don't have smokehouses. So like all the Spanish canneries we work with, they don't have them. Yeah. It's just really. It's just not the flavor profile. It's not the flavor. We're used to when we're talking about European tin fish and Americans obviously with our obsession with lox. Yes. You know, we love smoked salmon, but definitely not in canned form.

17:53So it is a bit of a paradox. It is. but it's obviously it's you know second or third top seller for us always and people just go it's so good we've probably had our salmon it's unbelievable yeah no it is and is Flyby Jing your salmon collab? I love that product it has no plans to go away it's so good okay so where what's the road map I mean are we doing shellfish I feel that will happen yes well sorry no it won't because I look at your eyes and you're like, Matt, you're not. It will, but it's not on our direct roadmap right now. Like right now we're really focused on getting a group of eight core SKUs that we're going to scale nationally into retail and just from our surveying and just like the way that our product assortment fit together.

18:41It just did not make sense to get, you know, bivalves in there. But we will because I'm so, obviously, they're so amazing. They're like the, as far as I'm concerned, they're the only like always sustainable blanket statement like bivalves are absolutely incredible like climate solution muscles baby exactly oysters you know it's just so i think we'll we'll do it but it probably will be like 20 maybe 2025 becky are you saying that is the demand just lower for for for tinned shellfish than fish i think in the main like right now what we're trying to do is grow our consumer base. Like we love, we love our, you know, New York and LA consumers, but like that is not where this company is trying to end up.

19:25Like we want more people nationwide to be eating. So let's talk about retail then a little bit. Do you have like a favorite retail channel that you're operating in right now or you might be operating in the future? I, I, you're very candid and I love it. And you're, you're honest because some retailers are not as cool as others. We've had such good experiences. Like we, I don't know, we've, I feel like we've just been lucky across the board our relationship with our distributor which is like one of the big distributors that people often like have issues with um we've just been lucky so far you know we're a young business so i'm sure that's where are so where you mentioned whole foods is there another channel that you're selling out of that we might not know about yeah so whole foods is our you know our biggest partner right now obviously a very priority partner we're in the northwest excuse me we're in southern california um the northeast the southwest as of this month in Northern California.

20:16Cool. And then we're just in, we're in regional natural grocery stores across the country. So Moms, you know, Lassen's, Bristol Farms, Central Market, New Seasons, places like that. Yeah. And that's kind of like the roadmap for 2023 is like really expanding into those regional grocers. Have you had a Walmart conversation? I haven't. I'm waiting. The time is not yet, is not yet right. But like, I think you have to make sure the awareness is there before you go into a place like that. And it takes, you know, in my tiny little world, It feels like, oh, yeah, a lot of people know Fish Wife, but, you know, on a national scale.

20:48Like, no one knows Fish Wife. It's the real talk. I mean, it really is any brand. I mean, these baby brands that no one really knows about you until you're on, like, The Price is Right. Yes. Maybe you can be it someday. Yes, maybe. That's the plan. But, yeah, so really working on building awareness right now so that when we go to bigger retailers, like, the product, like, we see at Whole Foods, the product is freaking flying off the shelf because we've built that consumer base. And in the Whole Foods consumer base, a fair amount of people do know Fish Wife. But that's not all of America. So you see a real shift in our culture in cooking with tinned fish.

21:22You see through education, through media, obviously doing stuff like this, but also just in general, maybe the demographic of America is changing. I don't know. How do you think about the growth of this category? Because you're going to need it to keep up. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I do think like the continued diversification of American food taste is definitely has a strong relationship with Tinfish because what I found and what was one of the more surprising learnings in the first year of the business was that there were like two very, very, very broad demographics of people that when I told them I was starting a canned fish company, they got it.

21:58And it was either, you know, foodie people, trendy people, you know, people were getting bone app, etc. Or it was first generation Americans. And it kind of was like country and culture agnostic. They might have been from Europe. They might have been from Asia or the Middle East or the Caribbean. Like it was just all over the world. It became very clear that there was a much broader understanding of the use case for high quality tinfish and a much broader understanding of like the species. So, you know, a lot of like, you know, I grew up eating rice and sardines or I grew up eating anchovy sandwiches.

22:31Like shit that I had, you know, again, growing up in as a, I don't know, third generation, fourth generation American in New Hampshire. Like it was just can't. One of my favorite sardine dishes is from northern Thailand at Sotam Dur in New York. I love it. It's like super fiery, spicy, sweet. It's a great use of sardines. Wow. You're going to have to write that down. It's like a salad. Yeah, it's beautiful. But it's a great point. And do you feel like just to follow up on that statement, because I've noticed as well with all the work we do at Taste and we've written about Tindafish for a long time.

23:03Yeah. Is it a matter of the changing demographic or is it just tuna just did a huge disservice for Tindafish with the way Star Kiss was presented, how not great it tasted? Yeah. Yeah. I would say that that is sort of they did do a bit of a disservice because obviously that's I mean, that's the work we have to undo as a company now. Now, you know, my comrades in high quality tin fish, we have to show people, you know, this isn't this isn't the cheapest kind of protein you can get. It's like the easiest to eat. It's the healthiest. It's one of the most sustainable. But, yeah, it's not it's not commodity can tuna.

23:43And like obviously the price jump that has to happen from like two buck can tuna to, you know, we're at market like$7.99. it's a little leap that we have to get people to make but I think one of the things we're betting on is just it's changing the use case instead of having to mash it with mayonnaise and put it on white bread, you can make a beautiful onigiri you can put it over rice bowl, you can put it over ramen or you can put it over a salad and serve it to people or put it on a plate or put it on a goddamn plate and have it beautifully just sitting there and really, it's just so interesting to hear you talk about this category and the growth it's like a small luxury It's like we talk about coffee on the show.

24:21We talk about olive oil. Like it's not a lot of money. And I think of like the macro brewing world. Like we're spending$9,$10,$11 a bottle at a crappy bar. But we can't spend$7.99 on tin fish. That's going to like be so good for your body and your brain. And it's also going to take, you know, an hour out of cooking and cleanup. So, yeah. I mean, I obviously believe in it. But it's just a stigma of certain things we just don't want to pay for. Yeah, totally. But that's why we created, you know, such a fun brand that like is just down to earth, you know, people connect with. Like it has to be that way.