We know many of you can relate to this scenario. It’s time to place your next order of fish. You want to stock your freezer with seafood, but you go to our online shop and see that dreaded “sold out” symbol on your favorite fish. How could this be?
As hard as we try to avoid it, there are times when our most popular items will go out of stock. Our team diligently works to get those items back in our freezers as quickly as possible, but here are some of the reasons why you might on occasion see outages in our core rotation.
Unlike some seafood companies selling online who put up huge inventories and then sell from them all year, we’re constantly processing fish and refreshing our stock. In our shop, nothing lasts long enough to get past its prime.
Cutting by Hand
Our small but mighty team processes and cuts all of our fish by hand. The fish must be hand-cut, vacuum-sealed, super-frozen, and then labeled and stored until it is time to fulfill your order. Items like poke are even more labor intensive, because of the added time it takes to cut the salmon into those little cubes. Poke production can be a day-long endeavor for the team.
We can only process so much fish each week, and quality is our top priority. That’s why we inspect each piece of fish before it gets placed in its package. We’d rather have a product be out of stock for a day or two while we take the time to give you our best. Don’t worry though. We know what your favorite items are, and it is constantly on our minds to process those species before they sell out.
Balancing Demand and Variety
Our customers have a never-ending appetite for salmon, and we get it. Salmon is versatile, easy, and delicious. We could probably process salmon every day of the week, and we might still not keep up with demand some weeks, but if we did this, we couldn’t keep anything else in stock.
Over the past several months, we have made changes to our production schedule that have allowed us to focus more on processing the fish we know you want the most, the classics like salmon and cod. However, that doesn’t mean that on occasion your demand won’t outpace our production, especially if we see a huge increase in purchases of multiple products in the same week. The bright side: If you see one of our year-round products has short periods where it is out of stock, you know you are always getting the freshest product because you all are buying it as quickly as we process it.
Availability
The world of seafood is unpredictable. We can take all possible precautions to make sure our best sellers never run out of stock, but what happens when a farm takes an extended break to make improvements, or a big storm prevents fishing boats from going out to sea? Sometimes the reason why a product is sold out are beyond our control. We experienced a month-long outage of Loch Duart Salmon back in February when the farm was on their winter break allowing the newest fish to grow to size. It’s hard for us to see a customer favorite out for that long, but the health and safety of fishermen, farmers, and the stewardship of the environment drive our decisions.
Quantities Limited by Nature
The last reason a regularly stocked product might seem often out of stock is due to the limited nature of those items. We’re talking about shorts cuts, bellies, chops, and collars. These products are part of our efforts to use all parts of the fish, and they only get added to inventory when we are processing regular portions. There are only two pieces of belly and two collars or chops per fish, and there are only so many short cut pieces to go around.
As much as we’d love an endless supply of salmon bellies and short cuts, these items are much more likely to go in and out of stock due to the limited quantities that get produced compared to the standard portions. When you see your favorites are in stock, don’t hesitate to place your order. They can go fast. You can always sign up for the waitlist on a particular item if you want a notification when the product is back in stock. That way, you won’t miss your chance to get the fish you want.
