Pressroom

The deal: SeaBear Co., of Anacortes, acquires rival smoked-seafood company Gerard & Dominique Seafood, of Woodinville.
The parties: Mike Mondello, SeaBear president and CEO, and Dominique Place, co-founder of Gerard & Dominique.
When Mike Mondello traveled to Woodinville last fall to discuss acquiring Gerard & Dominique Seafood, a rival in the smoked salmon business, his strongest impression came after the meeting. Dominique Place, the owner of Gerard & Dominique, sent Mondello home with a selection of fine food samples, including smoked scallops. "Dominique said, ’When you go home, just toss them in a little olive oil and heat them up,’" Mondello recalled. "I was blown away. I remember telling my wife, ’Oh my God, I hope this deal goes through.’" Those smoked scallops oiled a remarkably smooth courtship that ended with Mondello’s company, SeaBear Co., acquiring Gerard & Dominique for an undisclosed price. The deal closed on April 1.
Mondello and Place are a bit of an odd couple. Mondello is a brash New York native. Place, who grew up in France, has a European sensibility and speaks with a heavy French accent. But a variety of factors pushed them together. Salmon prices are rising sharply, creating incentives for consolidation. At the same time, Dominique and his wife, Chouchou, were looking for an "exit door" for their retirement. None of their three adult children was interested in taking over the family business. Place got the ball rolling last spring, asking an attorney, Joe Brotherton, to reach out to possible buyers. Brotherton arranged to meet Mondello at the Washington Athletic Club, where the two are members. After a workout, they went upstairs and grabbed coffee to talk about Gerard & Dominique and whether SeaBear might be interested in acquiring the company. Mondello met a number of times with Brotherton and the Places over the next several months. He toured Dominique & Gerard’s 10,000-square-foot Woodinville facility. The discussions got increasingly serious, and by February of this year, the two sides signed a letter of intent.
On the final weekend before the deal closed, Mondello, who was in Phoenix celebrating his 50th birthday with a bunch of childhood friends from Long Island, kept a vigilant eye on his BlackBerry. He stepped away several times to take phone calls or answer e-mails, at the risk of razzing by his buddies, as the final details got ironed out. The acquisition greatly expands SeaBear’s sales channels. The company specializes in online and catalog sales of smoked salmon gift boxes and other seafood products such as halibut, crab and prawns. The company also owns the Made in Washington retail gift stores.
Gerard & Dominique does a lot of European-style or nova-style smoked salmon -- the silky, perishable variety -- and sells to supermarkets, hotels and restaurants. Its clients include the Fairmont Olympic Hotel, in Seattle, and the Morton’s of Chicago restaurant chain. Salmon prices have increased sharply in recent years, which was clearly a factor in the two companies’ calculations. Mondello said combining the two companies creates efficiencies with salmon and other seafood products. "Bringing the two product lines together mitigates some of the price pressure of salmon going up," Mondello said.
For Dominique and Chouchou, the buyout marks the end of an era. Dominique came to Seattle from France 33 years ago as a young chef, and worked in the local restaurant industry before starting Gerard & Dominique in 1990 with another restaurateur, Gerard Parrat. (Place bought out Parrat’s share of the business in 1998.) Place said he was "overwhelmed" for several days after signing the papers with SeaBear. He and Chouchou had built Gerard & Dominique from the ground up. Dominique even designed their first smoker, or as he pronounces it in his endearing French way, a "smok-eur." Since the acquisition, Mondello drove out to Woodinville to talk to Gerard & Dominique’s staff, and the Places came out to SeaBear’s plant, in Anacortes, to meet and greet the staff there. Combined, the two companies have nearly 100 employees. Dominique and Chouchou will continue running G&D as a unit of SeaBear. No layoffs are planned, Mondello said.

SeaBear Company, a national purveyor of smoked salmon and other specialty seafood, has acquired 100% of GD Seafoods, which does business under the Gerard & Dominique brand. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The acquiring firm believes that with this acquisition, the combined company enjoys the leverage of a broad line of high quality products, two respected consumer brands, and strength across multiple distribution channels, positioning it for significant growth in the high-end niche of the seafood business.
Mike Mondello, president and CEO of SeaBear, said: "Both the SeaBear and Gerard & Dominique brands are built on premium product quality, specialty niche marketing, and a deep passion for customer service. This strong alignment of our core beliefs is what got us both interested in the potential of joining forces."
Dominique Place, president of Gerard & Dominique, said: "We are thrilled to be joining the SeaBear team, as their depth in sales and marketing will allow us to serve our existing customers even better, and help us expand to reach new markets as well." Mr Place and his wife ChouChou, who together were sole owners of Gerard & Dominique, will remain with the company, as president and vice president of sales, respectively.

Give friends "lox" of flavor - and some tasty Omega-3s: Sockeye Smoked Salmon is great for brunch (bagels and cream cheese not included).

SeaBear held a party unlike any other in the continental United States to celebrate 50 years in business in September. With customers and friends from coast to coast, SeaBear brought the party to them by creating the world’s largest dinner party.
SeaBear, a nationally recognized purveyor of premier seafood, celebrated its 50th birthday with a simultaneous schedule of 50 dinner celebrations from coast to coast — spanning over thousands of miles, three time zones and a multitude of culinary and entertaining traditions. Fifty friends of SeaBear from across the country were chosen to host a dinner party for their family and friends.
Mike Mondello, SeaBear CEO, hosted the event from the party of more than 150 employees and friends at company headquarters in Anacortes. To kick off the coast-to-coast celebration, Mondello connected with the parties all across the country via a Web cast where he was able to simultaneously toast everyone.

When Anacortes fisherman Tom Savidge and his wife Marie started smoking salmon in their backyard, they probably never imagined it would lead to a national company with annual revenue approaching $20 million. This year SeaBear is celebrating 50 years in business. The company has continued to grow from the first backyard operation by adding new products, changing its marketing strategy and keeping its focus on one thing — providing a good product for their customers.
“We’re not in the business of selling fish. We’re in the business of helping people celebrate relationships,” said Mike Mondello, president of SeaBear.
In 1957, Tom and Marie began selling smoked wild salmon to local taverns. With that, Specialty Seafoods (later renamed SeaBear after a Native American legend) was born. The tavern owners loved Tom’s smoked salmon, but asked him to preserve it longer. Tom invented the gold seal pouch, which preserves the salmon naturally with no refrigeration required. He received a patent in 1971. Fifty years later, the company boasts an expanded line of products that include items like beer garden smoked salmon, seafood cakes, appetizers, desserts, chowders and soups, prawns and lobster.
“We sell a wide range of artisan seafood, but the heart and soul of our brand is wild salmon, the signature seafood of the Pacific Northwest,” Mondello said.
SeaBear has had three stages of growth over the past 50 years of business. From the late 1970s to the mid-1980s, the business sold gift products and redesigned the packaging to make it more appealing. “From that began both a robust catalog as well as a strong wholesale business nationally,” Mondello said. “That stage took it from local smokehouse to national business.”
Gordie Harang bought the business in the mid-1980s and built the plant at 30th Street and T Avenue, taking the business to a full-scale production plant that enabled growth, Mondello said. From the mid-1990s the company has evolved from a gift brand to also market for entertaining and healthy home dining. "We want customers to love us,” said Patti Fisher, vice president. “What we’re looking for is being part of celebrations with family and friends.” With more publicity about the benefits of Omega-3 fatty acids, found in wild salmon, people are also learning about the health benefits of eating seafood, she said. “There was larger consumer awareness about salmon,” Fisher said.
SeaBear also operates five Made in Washington stores throughout Western Washington. The chain was purchased by the company in 1992 and offers gifts with a local flavor, including SeaBear products. Virtually all the company’s salmon is from Alaska and it is all wild. Fish are hand filleted and workers use tweezers to remove the final bones. “Everything is done by hand. We really believe by using a hand process there is a better end product,” Fisher said. It is seasoned with salt and sugar and smoked for 14 hours.
The plant’s smoker runs every day except weekends and smokes about 10 racks with 500 pounds of salmon each session. The smoked salmon is then cooked for just more than an hour before being packaged for sale. A local fisherman uses the leftover fish pieces for crab bait. “We really don’t have waste,” Fisher said. The most popular product is the company’s smoked salmon trio, which includes portions of smoked sockeye, smoking king and smoked keta salmon. Last year they shipped 35,663 trio orders, about 9,000 of which were sold through the catalog and Web site.
In addition to SeaBear’s catalog and e-commerce business it has a strong wholesale sales division with distribution through retailers such as QFC, Whole Foods and REI. The company also has a retail store in Anacortes attached to the plant at 30th Street and T Avenue. The company’s focus was initially on the holiday market. The plant would shut down for months at a time between seasons. “One of the first priorities was building a business outside the holidays,” Fisher said. After expanding its offerings, the company now operates year-round — but the holidays are still the busiest time of year. "During the holiday season we’ll be packed and calls will come in nonstop,” Fisher said.
Now the company does about 30 percent of their sales in catalog and call center purchases. It has seen double-digit growth in sales and profitability for the past nine years. “At the holidays we are clearly competing with other premier food companies,” Mondello said, citing gifts and holiday food spreads. Year-round they are competing for entertaining and dining with high-end grocery stores and caterers. Mondello said the company’s target audience is affluent men and women with a passion for food. What sets SeaBear apart, he said, is what the brand means to customers. “We help them celebrate important relationships in their lives. We provide the product as well as the service,” Mondello said. With 95 percent of their customers ordering from out of state over the phone or Web site, he said it is important that customers feel a connection. “Thrilling our customers is hand and hand with our bottom line,” Fisher said. “We don’t want to be the biggest but we want to be the best.”
SeaBear through the years
• 1957 Anacortes fisherman Tom Savidge and his wife Marie build a backyard smokehouse and start selling salmon to local taverns. The Specialty Seafoods business is born.
• 1967 Savidge perfects his idea for a retort pouch and receives a patent in January 1971.
• 1974 Savidge dies and Russ “Doctor” Gibbons joins Marie Savidge to help keep Specialty Seafoods operating.
• 1977 Pete Cleland puts his life savings into purchasing Specialty Seafoods from Marie Savidge.
• 1978 Cleland introduces the gold foil pouch. Combined with Sam Payne’s new package design, this creates an award-winning gift presentation. The company’s direct mail business is born with a two-page catalog.
• 1980 Cleland presents smoked salmon at the Reagan White House.
• 1984 Trucking entrepreneur Gordie Harang buys Specialty Seafoods. Theo McCulloch becomes the company’s third president.
• 1987 Harang and McCulloch build a new 18,000-square-foot plant at 30th Street and T Avenue.
• 1992 Seattle entrepreneur Mike Garvey buys a majority interest in Specialty Seafoods. Garvey and partner Harang bring Gordon Bowker, co-founder of Starbucks, onto the board.
• 1993 The Made in Washington retail chain is purchased from Gillian and Jack Matthews.
• 1994 Heckler and Associates designs a new brand identity and logo to replace Specialty Seafoods. The name SeaBear is born.
• 1996 Mike Mondello joins the company as its fourth president. They focus their mission toward building the country’s premier seafood brand.
• 1998 SeaBear wins the grand prize at Alaska’s Symphony of Salmon and later takes a bronze medal at the Boston International Seafood Show.
• 1999 SeaBear enters the e-commerce age by launching seabear.com. Web sales total about $188,000 the first year.
• 2000-2005 A flurry of new products help their brand expand beyond gifts to include entertaining and healthy home dining.
• 2005 SeaBear partners with Hudson to be the exclusive smoked salmon sold at SeaTac airport.
• 2006 SeaBear is chosen by Kroger’s national private label supplier for shelf stable smoked salmon.
• 2006 The new seabear.com is launched. The Web site wins the gold medal for small merchants at the Multi-Channel Merchant awards.
• 2007 SeaBear celebrates 50 years in business.

ANACORTES - In a small salmon-processing facility near Fidalgo Bay, thriving catalog and Internet sales have a former backyard smokehouse approaching nearly $20 million in annual revenues. Every week, shipments of frozen wild salmon arrive there from Alaska and are filleted, pin-boned with tweezers, alder-smoked and vacuum-packaged before being shipped to Whole Foods, REI and directly to consumers in all 50 states.
The company, SeaBear, which celebrated its 50th anniversary this month, has seen double-digit revenue growth for nine straight years, thanks to growing demand for its prepackaged salmon fillets. Later this year, the company will begin leasing a nearby warehouse facility to accommodate its annual surge in business that occurs around the holidays, when SeaBear’s payroll balloons from 75 workers to more than 150.
Local fisherman Tom Savidge and his wife Marie founded the company — then known as Specialty Seafoods — in their backyard in 1957 and sold smoked wild salmon to local taverns and later to tourists on their way to the San Juan Islands. The company’s upward trajectory began shortly after the Savidges created and later patented a sealed package for preserving salmon naturally, without refrigeration. Tom Savidge died in 1974, and Marie Savidge sold the company in 1977.
Today, the company is owned by Mike Garvey, who’s the chief executive officer at Seattle-based Saltchuk Resources ... The company grew significantly in 1993 when it purchased the Made in Washington Retail chain. Today, the chain’s five stores account for 40 percent of the company’s sales. SeaBear’s most recent sales growth has stemmed from salmon’s growing popularity among consumers.
Patti Fisher, SeaBear’s vice president of direct-to-consumer sales, said that consumers’ increased awareness of salmon’s health benefits has certainly helped their bottom line, but it’s the heightened interest in salmon as a high-end food that’s really driving business. Awareness of salmon’s health benefits “certainly didn’t hurt our business, but what’s driven it more is people who are entertaining with family and friends,” she said. Meanwhile, under company President Mike Mondello, SeaBear has added frozen fish, oysters, mussels, crab, various chowders and other value-added products that have helped stabilized the business year-round, and decreased its reliance on holiday sales. “Our target customers are often men and women who have a passion for food,” Mondello said.

Alaska’s Copper River is celebrated for its yearly wild salmon run, and right now SeaBear, a leading wild salmon purveyor, is shipping fresh Copper River sockeye during its "Straight from the River" event. This wonderful salmon needs very little to make it spectacular. In fact, SeaBear includes a free packet of sea salt and cracked pepper, along with simple instructions to roast the fillets slowly at 250 degrees for about 25 minutes. The results are amazing. Price for eight dinner-sized sockeye fillets is $74.99 (plus shipping), and there’s a wide variety of other salmon choices such as whole fillets, burgers and steaks, as well as smoked.

of the world’s most famous salmon run by reserving SeaBear’s 2005 Straight from the River Wild Copper River Sockeye Salmon. During the week of June 13th, eight 6-ounce fillets arrive fresh at your door directly from the pristine waters of Alaska’s renowned Copper River.

and toxic chemicals in farmed salmon is enough to make anyone a fish-phobe. Sadly, avoiding fish – particularly meaty ones like salmon – can affect your health. Salmon is one of the best sources of the omega-3 essential fatty acids, which the body needs for mental function, cardiovascular health and to fight inflammation. Fortunately, SeaBear offers frozen wild salmon fillets with accompanying marinades and sauces, as well as portable single-serving pouches of cooked, ready-to-eat salmon. In the pouches, you can choose either sockeye, which has a more robust flavor, or pink, with a milder flavor. The 3.5-ounce packet of sockeye provides 22 grams of protein and 8 g fat, including 1,100 mg of those omega-3 fatty acids. The pink salmon has 34 g protein, 6 g fat and 1,700 mg omegas-3s. The price, about $6 a packet, might be higher than what you can get at your supermarket’s fish counter, but at least you’ll know you’re buying wild Alaska salmon.

If you are looking for an easy lunch that’s good for you and tastes great, order these packets. This probably was the best lunch I’d had at my desk in months. It couldn’t have been easier. Each pack hold fully cooked boneless/skinless pieces of wild salmon with a bit of sea salt. The company offers a booklet with ideas on how to prepare the salmon packets. I just ripped it open, piled the wild salmon onto a baguette and added the lettuce leaves I’d packaged separately. Every bite was great and I would have been sad I’d come to the end of my sandwich if I hadn’t been so full. Plus I had the satisfaction of eating something so healthy. The American Heart Associations recommends people eat two servings of omega-3 rich fatty acids (such as SeaBear salmon). There have been concerns in recent months concerning farmed salmon, but this is wild salmon that hold none of those worries. I’m planning to order more because if I’m stuck eating lunch at my desk, I figure I should at least have something I enjoy." – Sue Ontiveros

The luscious Appetizer Sampler Collection includes a half-pound each of BeerGarden, Copper River, and Nova Style smoked salmon, plus salmon-and-spread roll ups, all rich in Omega-3 fats. It’s shipped on ice; thaw overnight and arrange the fish around a bowl of the sweet onion mustard that’s provided."

Now, from SeaBear Smokehouse in Anacortes, Washington, comes Raging River Brand wild salmon in its own little pouch, 6 ounces of sockeye salmon from Alaska with just a touch of sea salt to add interest. Turn it into a salad or use it as a sandwich ingredient for the kids. Anything’s possible."

Boosting your Omega-3 intake is easy when you choose salmon. This popular fish tastes terrific no matter how you prepare it - baked, broiled, grilled, poached, hot, cold, in salads, or in burgers ...
Wild-caught Pacific salmon is a great choice. Alaskan salmon earns particularly high marks for your health because they come from well-managed fisheries with clean waters.
If you can’t locate wild salmon in your area, you can mail-order it frozen from SeaBear Salmon (800-645-3474; seabear.com). Most canned salmon is wild; cans labeled red salmon contain sockeye salmon, which has a more robust flavor than pink salmon, the other canned variety

This sampler includes eight 6-ounce fillets of Sockeye, King, Coho, and Keta salmon (two of each kind), four complementary sauces, and a booklet on healthy eating from the American Heart Association. The omega-3-rich fish are wild-caught in Alaska and shipped frozen.

Mike Mondello wants to give SeaBear Smokehouse Inc.’s salmon the cachet of a refined, upscale product sought out by epicures who are also health- and environment-conscious.
Key to this ambition is Anacortes-based SeaBear’s newest product, called "Healthy Hearts wild salmon dinner fillets" — a package of eight six-ounce frozen salmon fillets, packed in dry ice with four sauces, shipped directly to consumers’ homes. It’s targeted directly at homemakers who want to impress guests, or can afford to spend freely on food. "In four months it’s become the most successful new product," said president and CEO Mondello. "It’s totally high end."
With such innovations, SeaBear, long known for packaging expensive salmon gift boxes, is expanding into the mail-order gourmet market. Since arriving at the company in 1996, Mondello has been recasting his company with new products and new target market. To do this Mondello is capitalizing on increasing public awareness of an array of seafood-related environmental and health issues. These include the sustainability of wild seafood resources, the importance of Omega-3 fatty acids for heart health, and increasing doubts about the environmental impacts of farmed salmon, as well as the health implications of the antibiotics and dyes that salmon farmers use.
At the equivalent of $20 a pound, the Healthy Hearts fillets don’t find much of a market here in the salmon-rich Northwest. Instead, the company does about 95 percent of its direct-mail marketing business in tony neighborhoods in California, Texas, New York, Florida and Chicago, Mondello said. "We don’t compete on price," Mondello said. "Our brand doesn’t stand for anything but super-premium quality. We define our customers as affluent men and women who have a passion for food." SeaBear’s new product line has been catching the attention of the gourmet press. Earlier this year New York-based Saveur magazine published a one-page piece about SeaBear’s premium Copper River Salmon, entitled "Alaskan Pride."
"Copper River salmon is a known name right now, like Niman Ranch pork," said Saveur food editor Melissa Hamilton in New York.
Another important step Mondello is taking is to add the Marine Stewardship Council logo to its packaging. The London-based council certified Alaska’s salmon fishery as sustainable in 2000, and SeaBear has become one of the first seafood processors to use the council’s leaping fish logo on its packaging. SeaBear had to prove the origins of its fish to be able to use the label. "It shows the vision and leadership of SeaBear that they’re promoting the sustainability of the resource," said Karen Tarica, U.S. commercial project manager for the council’s U.S. office, in Seattle.
Kristine Kidd, food editor for Bon Appetit Magazine in Los Angeles, called SeaBear’s environmental certification "important."
"We know our readers enjoy shopping at farmer’s markets, and we talk about environmentally sound products more and more," she said.
The new emphasis on frozen dinner portions and the epicure market is a marked difference from the company’s previous focus on the gift market. Mondello came to the company after a career as a marketing director for high-profile companies including Procter & Gamble and Celestial Seasonings Tea Co., and his mission was to turn SeaBear into a high-end brand name with national recognition.
Back in 1996 nearly everything SeaBear made in its Anacortes processing facility was packed in "retort pouches," essentially soft cans. While the retort process still works for the gift market, it isn’t suited for the dining quality that Mondello’s epicure customers are seeking. "That kind of event is not deliverable out of a retort pouch," he said. During the last five years SeaBear’s overall sales have remained flat ... as Mondello has shifted the focus away from the gift market and has shed unprofitable lines while building the epicure market. An indication of the change is that SeaBear’s summer business, much of it tied to heavily marketed Copper River salmon run, is up about 80 percent from five years ago. Mondello expects that within five years half the company’s sales will be year-round, while the balance will be for the holiday season.
SeaBear has emerged as innovator in adding value to Alaska’s wild salmon harvest, said Laura Fleming, public relations director for the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute in Juneau, Alaska. The salmon-catching business in Alaska, much of it headquartered in Seattle, has been financially damaged in recent years by competition from cheap Chilean farmed salmon. "I think it’s pretty exciting," Fleming said. "His company wants to leverage the qualities that differentiate our products from industrially produced salmon."
Tapping his experience with Celestial Seasonings, Mondello has sought to create a mystique with SeaBear’s packaging, peppering the boxes with evocative copy and photographs evoking the product’s Northwest roots. He’s also cultivated a unique presentation among call center employees, who are trained to engage customers with local color and information about the fish and its origins. The company only contracted out its call center work once, and the result was "terrible." "The call center, the people who talk to our customers, are an immense piece of building a super-premium brand," Mondello said.

The most celebrated wild salmon run in the world begins in mid-May in Cordova, Alaska, at the mouth of the 298-mile-long Copper River. More than 2 million sockeye, king, and Coho salmon return from the sea and fortified with rich oil stores and hefty muscles, start their arduous journey up the river’s iceberg-ridden waters toward their birthplace to spawn. "It’s a total frenzy" says Mike Mondello, president of SeaBear Smokehouse in Anacortes, Washington – but he’s not talking about the fish; he’s talking about the human excitement surrounding their arrival. "Every restaurant in the area is clamoring to have the first Copper River salmon on their menu; every home grill is fired up in anticipation." Three years ago, SeaBear – a purveyor of smoked fish and prepared seafood – set out to bring this very local luxury to more-distant shores. Its mission: to select the finest Copper River Sockeye, a variety known for its robust flavor, ultrahigh oil content (only king salmon from the Yukon river are higher in oil), and brilliant red flesh, then ship it to a handful of customers. The salmon must be preordered. Then, after it’s caught, it is immediately cleaned, filleted, and packed on ice. Within 24 hours of leaving the river, the sockeye arrive on doorsteps across the country. SeaBear’s sockeye are fished early in the run, which lasts about eight weeks (the fattiest specimens tend to reach the river’s mouth within the first few weeks), and the company sets stringent standards for everything from weight to firmness of flesh to color – workers put in overtime last year to fill the more than 700 orders received. "We choose only the best from an already top-notch fish," says Mondello. "I guess people are beginning to notice."

Equally as unlikely a product to be ordered over the phone is salmon, but it is making the trip from stream to kitchen in record time. Not only that, a single order can bring an assortment of forms of this noble fish that bear no resemblance to each other save for their origin. SeaBear, Anacortes, Wash., specializes in salmon fillets – sockeye, king, or North Pacific Keta – smoked over slow burning alder wood. Delivered in wooden gift chests, they make impressive presents, if even just to yourself. The versatility of the fish and the range of SeaBear’s imagination doesn’t top there, however. Wild king salmon steaks are shipped fresh in vacuum-sealed pouches (and come with a tub of smoked-house basting butter), while smoked salmon spread makes an ideal party hors d’oeuvre. The revolutionary ideas, though, are smokehouse salmon chili (combining chunks of wild Alaskan salmon with diced vegetables, garlic and spices) and smokehouse salmon chowder (fish stock, potatoes, and cream), both shipped in foil packs, ready to be opened and popped in to the pot. The only ingredient that must be added is milk for the chowder.

Lewis and Clark’s first gastronomic encounter with the Pacific Northwest was thought to have been with smoked salmon given to them by the Indians. Salmon is the great culinary constant of this region. The indigenous tribes still celebrate the annual return of the salmon with a ceremony called First Fish. Local fishermen observe the custom of kissing and then releasing the first salmon they catch as a gesture of thanks and for good luck. Imagine you’re Lewis and Clark and taste smoked salmon for the first time.

A 6-½ pound fillet makes an impressive first course for 35 and costs $249.95, plus shipping.

SeaBear’s backers striving to give its seafood products a special panache Seattle marketeers have created a nationwide mystique around Starbucks coffee, Redhook beer and Chateau Ste. Michelle wine -- so why not fish? That’s the thinking behind a group of Seattle financiers who believe they can put Northwest salmon on the tip of every upscale American’s tongue. To do this they’ve purchased a small but established company called SeaBear, and hired as CEO a high-powered marketing whiz who previously directed marketing campaigns for Celestial Seasonings Tea Co. and Procter & Gamble. A second-generation Italian New Yorker, SeaBear CEO Mike Mondello admits he doesn’t know much about Washington’s fishing industry nor about salmon. What he does know about is creating a high-end brand name, and getting consumers to believe in it.
"We’re out to lead a seafood revolution, doing to the seafood category what Celestial Seasonings did to tea, and Ben and Jerry’s did to ice cream," says Mondello. "We’re not a seafood team, but we’re a talented team."
If anybody can give salmon panache, Mondello can, said Mo Siegel, the legendary founder and CEO of Celestial Seasonings. Siegel calls him "the best new product person we’ve ever had."
"What Mike is really good at is creating a gestalt," Siegel said from his Boulder, Colo., office. "You look at what Howard Schultz has done for Starbucks, and he created a gestalt in an area that was pretty generic. Mike has a pretty good chance of creating a positioning that would make salmon more famous, and at a higher price."
Mondello and company directors haven’t yet decided what direction the company will take, although he believes it may include a still-undeveloped retail concept. He shows proposed examples of SeaBear packaging that feature evocative artwork of a fishing vessel at sunset, accompanied by text describing the salmon fishery. "Every inch will be telling you a story. These things will be dripping with quotes, absolutely," he said, alluding to Celestial Seasonings’ practice of covering its packages with quotes.
Mondello may be an outsider, but the company’s backers aren’t. SeaBear’s prime investor is Mike Garvey, a fifth-generation Seattle resident who is co-chaiman of Totem Resources Corp., which operates Foss Maritime and Totem Ocean Trailer Express. Garvey was among the initial investors in K2 Corp. and Chateau Ste. Michelle. Another key investor is Gordon Bowker, co-founder of Starbucks and of Redhook Ale Brewery. "The opportunity is really analogous to what took place with other areas -- wine, coffee, beer, potato chips," Bowker said. "I think the Pacific Northwest is justly famous for its seafood, but there really is no company taking advantage of the opportunity to provide a really high-quality premium branded identity."
Here’s what Mondello has to work with: SeaBear is a 39-year-old Anacortes company, originally called Specialty Seafoods, that developed a way to can fish in flat pouches for the gift-by-mail market. While the $10 million company has since changed its name and added award-winning graphics and a wider range of products, it’s still a company focused on gifts. Since Garvey bought it in 1992, SeaBear also has purchased Made In Washington, a regional chain of six gift stores built around items originating in the state. The stores now feature SeaBear salmon, and could become the model for SeaBear’s expansion. Company backers won’t say how much they’ve invested to date, or what amount of capital their future plans might call for.
SeaBear is trying to carve a place in an industry that is struggling to adapt to changing eating habits and to the fact it’s the one food industry that primarily harvests from the wild. This latter fact has helped drive most prices up, contributing to a slight dip in North American fish consumption last year, to 15 pounds per person. Salmon is one exception to the upward trend in prices, with a flood of wild Alaskan fish and their farm-raised cousins inundating world markets and driving prices down. With low-end canned salmon sales dropping despite the low prices, the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute has been trying to encourage new markets for cheap pink and chum salmon, turning it into ersatz products including sausage, ham and jerky. Mondello intends to take precisely the opposite direction. "Salmon is a storied fish with legends behind it and a great reputation," he said. "You can’t tell the story unless you’re authentic. Salmon hot dogs are not authentic."