796: Founder in the Field with Fishwife’s Becca Millstein

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1:04I feel so fortunate that I started a tinned seafood company, a seafood company generally, because all of the places that I have to go on business trips are like some of the most beautiful places in the world. So it's like, you know, the coast of Cantabria, the coast of Galicia, the coast of Washington State. The sea has such an impact on the way that the final end product tastes. This is Taste. I'm your host, Matt Rodbard.

1:36Becca Milstein doesn't always run her tinned fish business, Fish Wipe, from a desk in Los Angeles. For several weeks of the year, she is traveling the world, visiting the docks, boats, auction floors, and multi-generational canneries that help bring her company to life. On this very special episode, we followed her to the town of Santona, located on the northern coast of Spain, where the anchovies that go into nearly every Fishwife tin start their journey. This is the second time Becca's been on the show. We first talked back in 2023, when Fishwife was still the buzziest new thing in tin fish.

2:10Three years and a memorable Shark Tank deal later, she's running a company that is swiftly growing revenue, sold at Whole Foods and Costco alike, and it all feels like Becca is just getting started. But on this trip, none of that really mattered. What mattered was the anchovies, the people who catch them in the Bay of Biscay, the family that processes the fish, and a founder who still shows up to watch it all happen. This is Founder in the Field with Fish Wife.

2:42Becca Milstein, we're here. We've had a crazy couple days. The best. The best couple days maybe of my life. So we're at the end of the journey, but we're at the start of the episode. I wanted to start here. We're going to really find out about how Fish Wife, you know, gets the anchovies into tins here in Santonia in northern Spain, right on the edge of the Basque country. But first, Becca, like, just remind us who you are and what Fish Wife is all about, because I just absolutely love what you do from the brand, from you as a founder. The more I get to know you, the more I root for you. I'm a big fan.

3:18Oh, Matt, that means so much to me. It's been such a special couple of days. Just a little reminder of who the heck I am. I'm Becca. I'm the CEO and co-founder of Fishwife. I've been working on this company for about six years and working with the folks that we're visiting, that we've been visiting with for the past two days for four of those years. And yeah, just so fun to bring you, see how it all works. Yeah. Well, tell me about your relationship with this part of Spain. And we are here sitting, we just went on a tour. I have a little sweat. I smell like great anchovies. Such a wonderful, I love being out in the field.

4:00How did you get introduced to this family, Javier, Sandra, the family here who you've been working with for so long? Yeah. So we started looking for an MSC certified anchovy. So that's the Marine Stewardship Council. It's the most globally recognized seafood sustainability certification. um so in the first year of the business 2021 um we really wanted to sell anchovies obviously an iconic tin fish product a really interesting tin fish product because it has such a different use case than all the rest of them you know where a lot of people will use our tuna salmon trout sardines for meals you know they'll put them on salads rice bowls pastas toast small use anchovies on toast but anchovies are a cooking ingredient so much of the time um so we really wanted to bring that into the product assortment because it does introduce this whole bevy of other use cases making beautiful sauces um etc so we set out to find the this sustainable fishery and it turned out that this was the only one in europe and it's a really interesting and amazing story because this town that we're in Santonia, it is an anchovy town.

5:14Like that is what they do here is they, they, you know, source, they fish anchovies and they can them. The whole economy is dependent on the sea and the health of the, of the anchovy fishery. And in, I think it was 2005, the fishery had been really overfished. And, um, I think, you know, everyone in the town, the fishermen, the canners um you know the government local scientists etc everyone was like okay if we don't do something really drastic about this this town is going to become a ghost town like the we will completely collapse the fishery and this town will be you know a phantom of the past yeah it'll be uh it'll be basically like uh the last of us exactly it'll be basically like that it'll be the last of us we don't want that no no mushroom monsters yeah no mushroom monsters but we don't want that for our friends here.

6:06We love these folks. So they all got together and decided they were going to shut down the fishery for ended up being I think it was five years. Some somewhere else I read it was three years, but somewhere between three to five years, they completely shut down the fishery. So no one going out to fish. And during that time, the fishery repopulated and it got to sustainable levels, I think in like between 2008 and 2010. And ever since then, they've been extremely stringent with the quotas per boat in the fleet and per each season. So they determined the amount of, you know, the amount of the stock they could harvest in order to make sure the stock could continue to repopulate itself, which is the definition of a sustainable fishery.

6:56So I just think that's a really important story to tell because fisheries can, recover you know you hear about overfishing all the time and it's a huge huge problem um but with the right cooperation between all of the stakeholders these fisheries can totally repopulate and now this town is i mean you've been walking around it for the past few days it's thriving as you'll hear in the episode we we have walked uh through through the docks avoiding cranes like mackerel hitting us possibly running it being run over by anchovies lots of fish sardine thrown at your head and really we went to an auction it's such a journey we're going to go on I love that you think about sustainability and I think it's a big part about how you work with Whole Foods Market because they have really high seafood standards as we find out we're hanging out with our friends at Whole Foods yeah they have the highest sustainability standards possible it's crazy they have in some cases higher sustainability standards than certain like certain of the leading certifying bodies.

8:02So yeah, I always tell people like if you're going to buy fish and seafood at Whole Foods 100 % of the time, you can feel really good about it. Yeah, in a previous episode, we got to meet them all. So that was so fun just to be here and hear what an actual supplier does, what a buyer does and all these terms we hear in CPG land. Totally. Before we get to the boat, just tell me what it's like for you just to be here. at Origin as a founder. It's a big part of your journey as a founder of Fishwife. It's really important that you, you know, you get that Delta diamond, get that 360 because you're like on planes a lot and it's not just to have fun and do Instagram.

8:42It's actually to really meet and cut deals. And I know you're doing work here, but really, uh, why is it important for you to visit origin the whole thing is so it sounds so cheesy but it is the most it's very humbling and it just really fills i think myself and my team with so much gratitude every time we come here because we really are forming these partnerships that are beautifully symbiotic we're basically we're partnering with these these families um and these canneries that have been around for decades and decades this cannery has been around since 1940 and since 1940 they've been perfecting their expertise they've been perfecting this highly highly artisanal process also building relationships with the local fishermen building relationships with the oil farmers that we're sourcing our extra virgin olive oil from it's like this insane privilege to be able to tap into that just wealth of knowledge and resource.

9:44And I mean, when you get into the seafood industry, you see most of the businesses are family owned and have been owned intergenerationally because it's impossible to do these, to hone these skills, to form these relationships over a short period of time. Like it's just, you can't do it. So like the incredible advantage and opportunity that Fish Wife has is we can form these really deep partnerships with these families, which to your question of why is it important, like the relationship is everything. Just as their relationships with these fishermen, these farmers, that they have allowed this business to thrive for 80 years, us spending so much time building so much trust with these folks allows us to build this market, literally build this market in the U.S.

10:34Because, again, like, you know, the market for premium tin seafood, also it's called non-tuna in retail data. Oh, non-tuna, yeah. Because 80 % of the canned fish category in the U.S. is just tuna. Yeah. Like fish waste. And not the great tuna. And not the kind we're packing here. You're doing, like, bellies. We just saw some production here at the facility and you're doing these 25 ,000, like, limited run of bellies. Yeah. It's not. It's not what's making up 80 % of the$4 billion canned seafood market in the U.S. But yeah, it's just like this partnership allows us to grow that market. And that is what Fish Wife is doing.

11:11And you see it in the retail data. It's growing the non-tuna segment. It's mackerel. It's trout. It's anchovies. It's sardines. It's mussels. And this partnership allows us to do that. And they're able to tap into this incredible, you know, the American market is the biggest market in the world. so and it's also very for grocery for grocery and i think everything honestly yeah yeah um but it's really hard to tap into and tapping into the grocery market it's very challenging it's extremely nuanced it's very expensive um it's not at all for the faint of heart it's not intuitive so you know having fishwife as the conduit for their for their business is it just like is an amazing yeah match we should hit the boats what do you think hit the boats let's hit the votes.

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13:56That's quince.com slash taste for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slash taste. Dude, that's amazing, that bull ring. It's the only bull ring that's seaside. Wow, that's so... That's the only one in all of Spain. It's the only bowring in all of Spain that is next to the ocean. We wake up early, and after a light breakfast of Spanish tortilla, fresh-squeezed orange juice, and Dramamine for those who partake, we board a boat and motor out into the Bay of Biscay to see the fishing in action. You'll see we're on a boat in probably like half a mile off the shore. What do you like about getting on boats?

14:42What do I like getting on boats? I mean it's so special to be able to go out whether we're visiting like a mussel farm or we're as we are today going to see the anchovy fishing boats. It's just so special to actually see the source of where our fish comes from. So we're able to and I'm able to and my team is able to tell the story of where we get our fish and how it's processed truly from start to better. Yeah so what tell me about the first time you were on a boat in Spain specifically? The first time I was on a boat in Spain specifically was going to see, we were about to launch mussels, and we went to see, they're called batallas, in this beautiful inlet in Galicia, and we were learning how the farming method works.

15:33And, yeah, it's just so, you know, I feel like it just, it feels so far away, especially I mean I live in California it's very geographically far away from here but when you're up close it just seems kind of so simple and straightforward and like is a simple and straightforward as you think it's going to be and I feel like that's what I like to have boots on the ground experience for so I can truly tell that experience to our customers. In general what does Spain mean for you and fish life and and really working with this family who's taking us out on a boat to see these fishing methods for anchovies yeah one of the things that I think is the coolest parts of running this business and the business in general is that we are able to it's like their greatest privilege ever we're able to tap into all of this generational expertise that again has been developed over the course of many decades like this cannery that we are with today started in the 1940s so they've been developing methods to create the best tasting anchovy all of those years they've been building relationships with the local fishermen all those years they've been building relationships with the you know regional olive farmers all those years and we're able to partner with them and bring their product in the in the case of the anchovies specifically because it was such a simple product, bring it to a market that has never been exposed to it before, a market that maybe they don't have the, it's not part of their strategy to break into the US market.

17:16It's obviously extremely expensive and labor intensive to break into the biggest market in the world. So we're able to partner with them and bring their incredible product to American consumers. and it's just like this win-win situation where they don't have to do that work and you know there's no there's nothing in the u.s like what they've and really they don't need to work with the u.s i mean they're busy enough with their own with european clients the spanish market like so for you to work with them it must have been it must have been a mutual thing because i imagine the family we're meeting they they like you they like you know it's it just is like a perfect it is a really perfect union yeah yeah and yeah we've been working with them for four years now and it just feels like such a special relationship and they're also just amazing people like it really doesn't hurt that they're just like the best people no they are great tell me again why you love seafood, why it's just so like to you and not and not like working for a sparkling water brand.

18:28I find this seafood industry to be it's just such a deep and rich industry because there's it's such a long long long value chain and there's so much to take there's so much that goes into what ends up in the tin like it starts obviously in the sea and what's going on in the sea is there Are there a lot of plankton? Are the anchovies going to be really nice and juicy and fat? Like, what temperature is the water? Obviously, the temperature of the water dramatically impacts how the actual fish turns out. You know, what are the minerals in the sea, in the area that we're fishing in? Like, all of that leads to the ultimate flavor of the anchovy in the tent.

19:15So there's that element, of course, and there's so much more that goes into that. Rhett, signing a seafood company. It's really not a day in my life. I mean, and largely because we have such incredible partners. I think when I started the company, I was so intimidated. I was like, how the heck am I going to figure out how to get, you know, 20 ,000 pounds of trout across the country, for example. But what you don't realize before you start a company like this is your partners will help you figure out all of that out. They're domain experts and you're tapping into their domain expertise. So I do not regret it because it's so endlessly fascinating.

19:59Because there's the natural element, the organic element, and then there's the artisanal element. So when the fish comes into the cannery, how it is treated and processed that makes it as delicious as it is at the end of the day. Tell me what you're looking at right now. What are you seeing? What are you seeing like broadly when we exited the harbor? Set the scene. I'll set the scene. So we're in the Cantabrian Sea. We're coming off of a port in Santonia. It's a town exclusively devoted to the anchovy industry. It's the main economy by far. So you see all the fishing boats. You know, the surrounding topography is beautiful.

20:42We're looking at these gorgeous green cliffs. Yeah, you see like no buildings anywhere. It's like all protected and we're off the coast. Beautiful turquoise water. Yeah, it's a pretty stunning scene. Very verdant. What do you know about the sea that your anchovies come from? What do you know about the actual aquelcher here? So the marouar. Oh, we're going marouar. We're going marouar. I like it. I buy it. We're going marouar. So the seafood in, I mean, we source seafood from Galicia, which is the other side of the country and Cantabria. We source our tuna and our anchovies from here. And it's that the mix of the food that the anchovies and the tuna are eating and all the minerals in the water and the temperature that result in this incredibly high quality.

21:44We travel further out into the Bay of Biscay, much further out. The weather is threatening rain, but holding off. As we get closer, we spot clusters of two and three fishing boats casting out their nets. We are six miles off the coast of Santonia right now. How are you feeling? You good? Oh my gosh, this is such a dream come true. We've only ever gotten to see them load out the anchovies at the port. So being able to come all the way out here is such a dream come true. It's so beautiful. I know, so we're looking at this style of fishing with these nets. What can you tell me about the style? It's called perscene fishing.

22:28And they are, you know, just imagine a big net that they're casting out into the ocean around a school fish obviously you know a lot of consumers will be familiar with the phrase like hook and line when it comes to anchovies not a possibility they're tiny little fish hook and line you'll know or pollen line you're familiar with because that's how the most sustainable tuna are caught yeah um so they'll do that for uh when they're catching bonito out here um but today you know we're just seeing anchovy fishing so they're catching with per scene fishing so that means that there's a big net that they're putting out of the ocean it surrounds a school of fish and then they pull it up and the school of fish comes within it and it's very sustainable not a lot of bycatch they're fishing at the top of the water yeah they're fishing it sort of like yeah the top of the ocean yep yep and it's 10 30 a.m.

23:20right now and I was talking to the skipper of the boat Antonio and he's told me there's a quota here it's it's 10 ,000 kilograms a day for boat yeah and is this something that you think about when working with the producers yes so this is a super interesting fishery because as mentioned the entire you know that the economy of Santonia is dependent on the anchovy and bonito industry. So basically, in the early 2000s, the fishery was completely overfished. They didn't have strong quotas put in place. And everyone, the fishermen, the local scientists, the local government, agreed to shut down the fishery for five years to allow it to repopulate and reach certified sustainable status, which is truly shocking to think about because taking a lot of money off the table a lot of money which they could have kept it going but it would have ultimately destroyed totally just collapsed the industry yeah so they shut it down and it reopened in 2015 with MSC certification and ever since it's been really responsibly managed what does responsibly managed means it means putting those quotas into place so the fishery can maintain a sustainable stock.

24:45And it's just like kind of an incredible, amazing story of the local, you know, all the local stakeholders being like, in order for our town to not become completely depressed, which we've all seen those towns, like we need to do something that's really hard in the short term, but is going to pay off in the long term, which it completely has. So what are you seeing right here? We're We're about, I mean, I'm not good with this, 500 yards away from a cluster of boats. I've been told that they cluster when they know there are anchovies around. That's when you know that the fishing has happened and the nets have been deployed.

25:22What are you seeing right now? Oh, my gosh. Well, they're big, beautiful boats. Yeah, they really are. Yeah, they're gorgeous. They've got a lot going on. You know, the nets are so big. once we see them at the port you'll see how kind of enormous they are right now we can only see the sort of the tip of the fishing net but yeah I mean we're looking at like 20 boats that are all in like a mile radius I mean I guess they all just started fishing near moments ago yep well the flashing light we see some flashing lights the nets are being deployed it means stay the fuck away because if you get too close to these boats these nets you're obviously gonna get caught up in it so it looks like they're fishing all i see three or four boats that are deployed have deployed the nets this red one here yeah yeah and you can see kind of how far out this net is going like they're very long they're like yeah i don't know 50 feet long yeah they're they're very big they're lifting the net they're lifting the net so cool look what they're doing they're like it's lifting out i mean It's like the moment of truth is going to be here soon.

26:33I didn't mean to cut you off. I was just so excited. This has got to be like, there's so much patience that's required. And again, this is how you get these anchovies to your home in these beautiful tins that you produce. But it starts here. It starts here. Six miles off of the coast of Santonia. And it's all, I mean, this really is the season. Like, it's between April to May when the height of the anchovy fishing season is. So this is why we see everyone out and about trying to catch right now. Oh my gosh. It's... Yeah, they're pulling it up. Yeah, we're going to see. Moment of truth we can see over there.

27:16Oh my gosh. Can we just see these beautiful little fishies? Finally, we're close enough to really see the fishing in action. We crawl onto the bow of the boat to get a closer look. You can hear the heavy machinery in the background. All right, Becca, tell me, we're like five feet away now. Yeah. We can actually talk to these guys. And this is the moment. What are you seeing right here? We're seeing a bunch of beautiful, beautiful silvery little anchovies swimming about at the bottom of the pristine net. And we've got like 15 hardworking fishermen pulling up this big net. they're all pulling it by hand all super manual look at them it's such a manual job and and you can't you bruise these fillets that's the key right exactly yeah to get the highest I mean that is another quality distinguisher is you know just how the how the flush has been managed and dealt with and handled you know you don't want to stress them out too much so doing everything you know by hand gentle slow it's incredible to think about to be gentle six miles off the coast i know sentonian i know and all day long like these guys could be out here till 9 p.m so that's well it's a little hour out out on the boat um they've all got their little hums on their jackets on it seems like it's a very clean beautiful ship and uh a boat we'll call it a boat Not quite a ship.

28:48Not quite a ship. It's a boat. It's a fishing boat. But safety seems to be important. They are wearing helmets. But it does remind us how dangerous this job is. You see helmets are acquired by the folks fishing here. Yep. Yep. And you really, yeah. I mean, look at them. You got to really have some muscle for this job. This job is, it's intense. I think they're going to, they'll pull the anchovies up and then they'll put them in these big bins. There we go. Now they're lowering them into the ice. This is some fishing. This is some fishing. Fishing is happening. This is how it happens. This is how the magic happens.

29:24Yeah. Estaba jodida la cosa, oye. Y eso que estaba tranquilo el mar, eh. This is Javier, a man who knows his way around the docks. His family has worked in the Spanish conservas industry for generations, producing some of Spain's finest tinned fish. Back on land, we watch as the fishermen unload large crates of just-caught anchovies as well as mackerel and various other fish. Soon, they will be auctioned off to the highest bidder. Javier gives us his assessment of the day's fishing. I mean, what's this scene usually like? Is this a typical day or is it a little, what do you feel? For example, today is not a very crowded day.

30:04It's Monday. We depend a lot what time the boats start to fish the anchovy. For example, today it was a little bit tricky. Maybe they are coming a little bit late, later, like 6 in the morning, sorry, 6 in the afternoon. Yeah, yeah. It's a remarkable process. And so we're going to now head into the auction to see how the auction, are you excited about the auction? Yeah, for sure. Action always has like a special feeling before you push the button, you know. It's like, yes, I like a lot. So we just jammed into one of the stalls. We're number 74. We've got a button in front of us, but you don't want us to touch the button, right?

30:54No, it's not our place. It's not our place. Yeah, somebody else called Scanfisk is here. So we don't want to buy fish for Scanfisk. And about that button. In Santona, anchovies are auctioned off by lot, with small samples of the lots inspected closely by the buyers. During the spring anchovy season, these buyers come from all over Spain, representing grocery chains and regional markets selling fresh anchovies. But most likely the buyers are employed by the dozens of conserva's factories located in the town. Unlike traditional auctions, where the prices increase with higher bids, the anchovy auction works in reverse.

31:33The specific lot's ceiling number is set, a bell is rung, and the buyers control their destiny. Be the first to push the button, and you've just purchased thousands of pounds of anchovies. We take our seats. This is so cool. I mean, it feels we are at a live auction. There's somebody behind glass with a computer who's running the auction. What are we looking at here with the pricing about the monitor? Seven is the price where it starts and the number gets down. We just started the auction, so we're in the auction right now. Yeah. Right, so that's seven euros? Yeah. For what? For this fish. For one kilo?

32:15Yes, for one kilo, yeah. Got it, got it, got it. So we have seven euros for one kilo. All right, they look serious behind the... Wow. And so what does 166 mean? It's the name of boxes. Maybe it's around 10 kilos per box. So right now we're watching it. We're at 65. We're going down. We're at 641. We landed on 639. It's sold. It's sold for 6.39 euros per kilo for all those boxes. So that's the auction. Yeah, that's the auction. The first sample. The first sample. Yeah. And how many samples are we auctioning, do you figure? In a good day, you can have more than 200 samples. This episode is brought to you by Rula.