Santa Monica, Calif.-based Santa Monica Seafood recently began selling fresh seafood via AmazonFresh, two years after the famous Pike Place Fish Market started selling fish in Seattle through the online retail giant.
“Our company is so organized and the Cigliano family thinks outside the box, so this has been pretty seamless. The expense has been minimal and the possible return is intriguing,” Bob Vogel, Santa Monica director of retail operations, told SeafoodSource.
Since early June, SMS has been selling around 20 fresh items — including wild King salmon fillets and house-made Spicy Salmon Burgers — to AmazonFresh customers in the Los Angeles area. “They are asking for more items, but I want to make sure the 20 items are done right first,” Vogel said.
The fulfillment process for AmazonFresh runs very smoothly, according to Vogel.
“We get orders in on our computer at night, and then we process them first thing in the morning. We package everything as we do in the store — fresh fish is wrapped in wax paper — and the driver from AmazonFresh comes at a set time in the morning,” Vogel said. “The product goes into an AmazonFresh triple-lined bag with a bar code, along with several 4-inch thick gel packs,” he added.
Anders Miller, assistant manager and marketing director for Pike Place Fish Market, agrees that the fulfillment process is pretty smooth. “We have one guy working on fulfilling the AmazonFresh orders. We cut everything to order on-site, and then wrap it up in paper. We place special stickers on the package with the Pike Place logo,” Miller said.
AmazonFresh delivery drivers pick up orders at Pike Place twice daily. “If customers get their order in by a certain time the day before, the orders can be picked up the next morning, pre-dawn. If you have a dinner party that night, you can have product on your doorstep in the morning,” Miller said.
While AmazonFresh orders are a “very small percentage” of Pike Place’s sales, the service is definitely a plus for those who have difficulty getting to — or parking at — the popular tourist destination. “I see it as an opportunity to get people who live in the surrounding Seattle area and buy our fish, but don’t necessarily have the time to get in and out of this market,” Miller said. “Our percentage of sales go up in the winter, because there is a lot less foot traffic in the off-season,” he added.
