Fresh fish home deliveries launched after pandemic lockdown sees shift in seafood consumer habits. A STALWART of the South Coast fishing industry has launched a new home delivery service, promising ocean to plate locally in a day, and within 48 hours nationwide.
Fish at Home, by Brighton & Newhaven Fish Sales (BNFS), will be delivering fresh seafood to doorsteps across Sussex and nationwide after the 50-year-old business identified a shift in demand for such a service during Covid-19 lockdowns.
The pandemic’s positive impact on food delivery worldwide is well-documented, with surveys reporting sales more than doubling.
BNFS, known locally as Fish, says enforced Covid-19 restrictions and concerns over the freshness and sustainability of fish in supermarkets have combined to shift consumer habits – and effect a radical change in its business model. During lockdown, doorstep deliveries spiked at 500 boxes in a single week in 2020 and now its customers, the company says, are asking for a continuation of the home delivery fishmonger.
Now, the company will deliver ‘freshness-guaranteed’ fish to people’s homes with an offer that will also tap into greater demand for sustainable catches. One of Fish at Home’s products, Sussex Catch Export Box, will give seafood fans a selection of fish caught in local waters, such as Dab, Flounder and Huss, that are usually exported because of a lack of demand in UK markets.
Fish company director Kier Foster said:
“Fish is something people want to eat completely fresh and we know, from research and from what customers tell us, that they want to know that the fish they’re eating hasn’t been sat in storage for two weeks.
“The pandemic has clearly changed consumer habits in all sorts of ways and I think that includes how we want to buy and consume seafood. We have simply had to respond to what the customer now wants.”
Fish has long been providing Sussex Coast seafood both through its shop in Hove Lagoon, and via local delivery to restaurants and hotels with the company’s iconic logo ever present throughout the city on the sides of their fleet of vans.
In lockdown, as hospitality sales ground to a halt, Fish says it had to pivot to maintain sales and protect the livelihoods not only of its staff but the Sussex fishermen and women who had come to rely on their distribution network since its inception 50 years ago.
“Home delivery was the clear solution for us,” said Kier. “Not only was this ensuring the survival of our own business and the fishing fleets, but also that people could still have local and seasonal fish as part of their diet. The response and subsequent demand for the service was incredible.”