A FERVOR FOR FISH

DONNA W. CROTHERS

As the Lenten season winds down, a lot of seafood directors are liable to find that their prayers have been answered as far as sales volume is concerned.

Spotty sourcing problems notwithstanding, the popular seafood promotion opportunity has been blessed this year with good supplies of some important commodities, particularly farmed

species such as salmon.

Interviewed a few weeks into the Lenten season, supermarket seafood executives said up-and-coming products such as tilapia and crawfish are also helping create a good environment for their promotions -- and, in turn, strong sales.

"We have made a commitment to do something wonderfully special every week during Lent," said David Young, director of meat merchandising at Marsh Supermarkets, Indianapolis.

"There are still enough people out there observing Lent to be given some special attention," Young said, and the chain is paying more attention to seafood and other nonmeat items right now to meet their needs.

Randalls Food Markets, Houston, featured seafood in a full-page ad to begin the Lent season, according to Steve Fraley, category manager for food service. This year's ad was based on an aquaculture

theme and featured farm-raised seafood products from catfish to Chilean salmon, while last year's Lent ad featured a promotion of wild-caught Maine seafood.

Marsh is holding a display contest to give its seafood managers a chance to create eye-catching displays.

"A great number of stores build the type of big display that gives people a reason to stop and look," said Young, citing examples such as ships, airplanes or even a giant octopus.

Cooking demonstrations of marinated catfish are being used to boost Lenten seafood sales at Friedman's Markets, Butler, Pa., according to meat, deli, bakery and seafood director Howard Christie.

D&W Food Centers, Grand Rapids, Mich., has already made several references to Lent in its weekly seafood ads, according to Bill Bonzheim, director of seafood sales. Bonzheim added that the sales growth spurred by those ads is making this season "huge for us. I am not seeing the big sales increases only on Friday. They are strong all week long."

As Lee Weddig, executive vice president of the National Fisheries Institute in Arlington, Va., put it, "The aggressive promoters should see good increases in sales."

The prudent promoters are likely to score high this year as well. Buyers and merchandisers said the selection of the seafood varieties they are featuring this year is being shaped by supply as much as regional tastes.

Some are carefully working around the shortages of wild-caught species being caused by poor weather conditions or restrictive quotas on the catch at certain fisheries. Farm-raised seafood, such as catfish and salmon, appears to be in good supply this year, they said.

"You are coming off the winter into the spring, so there are always certain [supply] problems" related to weather, said Larry Morris, seafood director at Basics/Metro Food Centers, Randallstown, Md. "We like to promote everything for Lent -- the whole line of seafood." So far, however, Morris said he has had few problems obtaining most seafood items he has needed for Lent promotions, with the exception of crabmeat.

"This is a big time of year for farm-raised fish like salmon, catfish or tilapia," said Bonzheim of D&W Food Centers. He said right now "is the toughest time to get fresh fish, because the biggest enemy is the wind," which blows fishermen's nets.

Most buyers reported that quotas this season seem to be a more prevalent problem in obtaining adequate supply than weather.

Weddig of NFI noted that 85% to 90% of U.S. production is currently wild-caught fish, and the industry is facing problems. "Most of the major stocks of wild-caught fish around the country are under quotas, and quotas for some of the major fisheries have been reduced this year," he said.

Weddig said quotas this year were dropped most sharply for fisheries in the New England area, affecting supplies of Atlantic cod, haddock and flounder. However, he noted, the same fish can be found in the eastern Atlantic near Norway, where supply is abundant.

The quotas affected the way Doug Hampton, meat and seafood merchandiser at Rosauers Supermarkets, Spokane, Wash., scheduled his Lenten seafood promotions.

"We do promote seafood for Lent," Hampton said. To mitigate supply problems this year, he said, "I will generally try to take one or two commodity items and be very competitive on price rather than promote a whole lot of items."

Hampton said the quotas also are encouraging him to schedule promotions of wild-caught fish toward the beginning of the month,

when the catch limits are still being met, then fill in his supplies with farm-raised fish at the end of the month.

"They usually catch their quotas in the first week or two, particularly on bottom fish" like cod or flounder, said Hampton. On the other hand, "we seem to run a salmon special every week; it is farm-raised and in good supply."

Not only are adequate supplies presenting a problem with some species for Hampton, but so are prices for the consumer. "Seafood is getting so expensive that the consumer takes a good look at it before buying," Hampton said. "We are putting stuff on sale for what used to be the everyday price."

A buyer for a major West Coast supermarket chain said he has had difficulty obtaining adequate red snapper for promotions. "Fishermen have a lot more stringent quotas this year. We can hardly keep up with regular demand, much less with promotions," the buyer said.

The chain, which has fresh seafood departments in 90% of its units, normally would have had two or three ads with snapper by about the midpoint of the Lent season, but so far had only been able to run one.

At O'Malia Food Markets, Carmel, Ind., Director of Merchandising Tom Mathey is finding that Indiana's distance from coastal fisheries is challenging the quality of his supply. "You have so many people handling seafood from the sea to the store, and it is highly perishable," he explained.

At O'Malia, salmon is a popular item this Lent season, as is orange roughy. "We do a lot of orange roughy, because it is very, very mild and takes on the flavor of whatever it is being cooked with," Mathey said.

Young of Marsh Supermarkets said he likes to highlight one or two commodities per week during the Lent season, and often these may involve the more plentiful farm-raised fish.

For example, Young said, a recent Lent promotion featured salmon. "We displayed 15 different varieties of salmon, and we created a whole display of smoked salmon in three different forms," he said.

Many of the items featured at Marsh are value-added products, Young added. For example, a recent shrimp promotion included stuffed and cooked shrimp. "When you stuff products and marinate products, it creates something the customers haven't tried and something that will be easy for them to try," Young said.

Jim Reneau, director of bakery, deli and seafood operations at Houchens Food Stores, Bowling Green, Ky., also has seen a trend toward value-added seafood items.

"You are getting into a more customer-friendly product -- maybe even cooked and prepared products that the customer can take home and not mess up," Reneau said. Although Houchens has three stores with fresh seafood departments, Reneau said the chain is trying to expand its seafood program.

New products are adding interest to Lenten promotions this year, and along with prepared fresh seafood items, there are some new seafood varieties that are gaining interest.

"There are two that are coming on strong: the Lake Victoria perch and tilapia," said Weddig of NFI. "We see real vigor in those two varieties."

Bonzheim of D&W said he has seen a big surge in consumer interest in tilapia this spring. "We have been pushing tilapia for four or five years, and it has finally started selling," he said. "Lately we have been selling tilapia like crazy."

Another new item at D&W is the Sashimi Clipper swordfish from Japan, which is certified to be of such high quality it can be consumed raw in sushi, Bonzheim said.

Bonzheim said D&W this month is introducing several fish varieties, including swordfish, tuna and wahoo, in a new sushi section set apart with unique signs and Japanese cookware. His company is the exclusive distributor and marketer of the Sashimi Clipper products in Michigan, he added.

Several buyers in different parts of the country mentioned crawfish -- a staple in the Louisiana bayous but unknown in other areas of the country -- as a new addition to their seafood departments.

"We have put in live crawfish in tanks in selected stores," said Young of Marsh Supermarkets. "It is new in Indiana."

The buyer for the major West Coast chain said he is also "experimenting with crawfish as an inexpensive alternative to shrimp, with the shrimp market rising and making noises of going even higher."

The chain also will be introducing salmon burgers before Easter, which it purchases already prepared. "We're hoping that will be a popular item with health-conscious consumers," said the buyer.

Indeed, other buyers agreed that health consciousness could be just as likely to jog consumers' minds about fish this spring as adherence to Lent.

"With the promotions and the time of year, sales will probably increase threefold," said R.J. Harvey, meat buyer at Ingles Markets, Black Mountain, N.C.

However, Harvey said he is not certain how much of the increase is actually due to Lent. "Men and women alike start thinking about their weight in the spring, and fish is a good, healthy food," he said.

The West Coast buyer agreed that the spring promotion period appears to be acquiring a life of its own beyond Lent.