Delivering high-quality, wild-caught seafood from the icy waters of Alaska right to your doorstep is no easy feat. But as part of our mission to accelerate humanity’s transition to sustainable food systems by fostering meaningful, interconnected relationships between human beings, wild seafood and the planet, we’ve designed our cold chain to ensure that it preserves the quality, integrity and texture of the seafood that the fishermen and women have worked so arduously to bring in.
Our cold chain — another name for a temperature-controlled supply chain — was assembled to reliably deliver a box of seafood to your freezer, no matter where you are in the country. When you’re expecting seafood to be shipped straight to your door from Alaska, a multi-step cold chain process may seem complex. But it is the most effective way we have found to keep high-quality seafood flowing from Alaska to all of our members across all fifty states.
To help you get acquainted with our process, let’s walk through the cold chain from the sea to your home.
The First Step Is the Foundation of Fresh
After wild-caught seafood is harvested off the shores of Alaska, it needs to be promptly cleaned and flash frozen in order to preserve its freshness. This is one of the most critical steps in any cold chain of wild-caught fish, as it has a significant effect on the quality of the final product. In many cases, this step in the cold chain is what distinguishes a reputable purveyor of seafood from one that is willing to cut corners at the expense of quality.
If you’re wondering why our product is sent to you frozen rather than “fresh,” bear in mind that the term “fresh” is often used as a marketing tactic; unless we’re talking about live shellfish or another species that has been caught locally, chances are that the unfrozen product you see laid out at a local grocer’s counter was frozen before being thawed for presentation. It might sound strange, but the truth is that when it comes to wild-caught seafood from Alaska, freshness has everything to do with how quickly your seafood has been frozen.
Alaskan Seafood Processing and Quality Control
After these initial first steps are completed, the seafood is either processed at local facilities up in Alaska or shipped frozen to one of our co-packagers in the Pacific Northwest (we have a few!), where they remove pin bones from the fillets (when necessary), cut the seafood down to size, and do final quality checks before sealing the products in a protective ice glaze and packaging them so that they’re perfectly portioned and ready for you to cook. From here on out, the seafood stays frozen until you decide to cook it for your next meal.
Seafood, Steps Away From Your Table
After the seafood is processed, it’s held at a cold storage facility in Washington for a week or two until we know that you’re about ready for your next shipment. From there, we use freezer trucks to ship to various cold storage fulfillment centers that are strategically located across the country in California, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Florida, Delaware, and New Jersey. Having ready-to-ship seafood in cold storage in locations closer to your home than Alaska, allows us to offer you our finest catch — whether you live to the north, south, east or west.
Finally, you get to do your part in completing this cold chain process by packing and storing your seafood correctly.
Every step of our cold chain was designed to bring you as close as you can get to eating fish straight off the boat. By following the best practices to keep sustainably-sourced food flowing from Alaska to your home, we hope to do our part in honoring the uniquely Alaskan traditions that have been passed down through the generations, an experience that third-generation commercial fisherman and our founder Arron Kallenberg takes great pride in sharing with our members.
FAQs on Salmon Harvesting and Processing
Where is Wild Alaskan Company's salmon sourced?
Wild Alaskan Company sources each species of wild salmon from sustainably managed fisheries in Alaska.
Is wild Alaska salmon from Wild Alaskan Company processed abroad?
No, Wild Alaskan Company's offerings are never processed abroad. Each species of wild salmon is processed at either a local facility in Alaska or in the Pacific Northwest.
