SPLENDID SALMON'S GOAL: DEFEAT FEAR OF FISH

NANCY GRIFFIN

GLOUCESTER, Mass. -- A small salmon processor here is creating a program to channel customized, ready-to-heat fresh salmon entrees to supermarkets, hoping to capitalize on the industry's interest in the meals market and its wariness of fresh seafood marketing.

The vendor, Splendid Salmon Corp., a two-year-old company now selling fresh salmon and frozen salmon portions with various sauces, intends to tailor its products to the needs of not only supermarket chains, but individual stores within a chain, said Jill Fallon, vice president.

Fallon told SN Splendid Salmon plans to begin construction later this year on a state-of-the-art home meal replacement kitchen, inside its Head of the Harbor, Mass., plant. The completed operation will permit the company to perform full production and meal delivery.

"We will customize programs for supermarkets and deliver up to 20,000 meals fresh daily to stores -- maybe southwestern-style to one store, and oriental to another -- whatever the store's customers prefer," Fallon said. "While we'll be making deliveries fresh daily, we'll probably deliver every other day to an individual store.

"I think the timing is just right," she said. The well-publicized report, Foodservice 2005, by McKinsey & Co., showed the takeout meal industry topped $108 billion in 1996. Datamonitor, a food-service research company, predicts the industry will reach $176 billion by 2005.

The International Dairy-Deli-Bakery Association (IDDA) reported in a 1997 study that consumers bought 21 billion takeout meals in 1996, a 21 percent jump from 17 billion in 1990. Thirty percent of Americans interviewed said they would like to buy takeout even more often, 38 percent said prepared meals were essential to their lifestyles and 33 percent buy more takeout than they did two years ago.

Three years ago, the number of meals eaten out or taken out reached 51 percent of all meals consumer, topping the number of meals prepared at home for the first time. All this and more has Splendid Salmon laying out its nets to catch the business it is sure is coming.

Fallon said Splendid Salmon expects to benefit from supermarket operators' realization that, for many of them, prepared food production is a losing proposition. She cited the study done by the Hale Group and funded by Coca Cola; 10 case studies of supermarkets producing Fresh meals items under traditional food-service cost structures showed operators had a 2% loss, while other food-service operations were showing 10% profit.

After this report came out, one New England chain reportedly canceled plans to install new kitchens for Fresh meals production in all its stores, Fallon said. Such market indicators are emboldening small processors like Splendid Salmon to chase after the business.

Splendid Salmon uses only farmed salmon from Bay of Fundy farmers in Maine and Canada. Fallon said she and the company's other principal, president Jacques Hensch, believe that besides providing a convenient program to stores and high-quality, nutritionally valuable and tasty food to consumers, they will not be preying on overfished New England stocks.

Fallon was an environmental lawyer with the Department of the Interior during the Bush administration. When she returned to Massachusetts, she was shocked at the lack of concern she saw in this "environmentally conscious state" for endangered Georges Bank fish stocks.

"I intended to set up an environmental law practice, but I found I just kept studying aquaculture," said Fallon. She created the Aquaculture Coalition in 1995. While conducting a tour of salmon farms in Eastport, Maine, she met Hensch, a Swiss investor with interests in salmon farms, processing plants and salmon hatcheries in Maine and New Brunswick.

The two found their interests in salmon meshed nicely, and they founded Splendid Salmon. Now Fallon says she can combine her environmental interests with making a living.

"I wanted to make a difference in the environment. Now I can do it by getting people to eat more salmon, which will make them healthier, smarter and happier" and take pressure off wild stocks, Fallon said, adding the firm has no plans to expand to other species.

"We'll stick with salmon. It's such an extraordinarily healthy fish to eat. It's quickly becoming the fourth protein," said Fallon. "And we're just starting to touch on the recipes. Look how many ways we can cook chicken."

The fresh meals line is being called the Power, the Beauty and the Taste, "which we promise to deliver daily," she said. The first group of meals will feature salmon grilled in a variety of ways, with a starch and a garnish, "beautifully presented" in a vacuum package designed to extend shelf life. One proposed recipe is Morrocan-style salmon with orange sauce and couscous.

Splendid Salmon has been working with "several" supermarket chains this summer to test the system and its recipes, Fallon said. She declined to identify the chains.

Splendid Salmon's current product line includes the "Salm-wich," made with 100 percent Atlantic-farmed salmon meat, and a line of fillets with all-natural sauces. These are processed in Lubec, Maine, using a patented freezing method called TRUFRESH originally developed in Japan to maintain high quality for the demanding sushi market, then refined in the U.S.

Supply has always been a worry for processors that depend on wild fish stocks; weather affects fishing and stocks suffer regular but unpredictable down cycles. Supply won't be a problem with farmed salmon, Fallon said. The industry rose from 100,000 metric tons worldwide in 1987 to more than 600,000 metric tons in 1995 and is still climbing.

"When this succeeds, and I'm confident it will, we'll duplicate it in other markets," Fallon said. Meanwhile, she does a lot of her own market research by taking the test meals home for dinner.

"I'm a classic customer. This is exactly what I want," Fallon said. "When I'm alone, I just work till I'm starved. Then I want something good, but I want it right now."