It may seem an unlikely location for a salmon business, but since late 2012, pursuing a grassroots, one-city-at-a-time strategy, Sitka has seen enough growth in sales and distribution to establish hubs in major cities like Chicago and Indianapolis, allowing the company to spread to more than 10 major metro areas across the Midwest. With projected annual sales of $4 million this year, Sitka currently has more than 2,500 members, more than 100 wholesale accounts, and is poised to move roughly 100,000 pounds of salmon this year, making it one of the largest community-supported fisheries in the nation. The company employs a number of full-time employees in several locations and works with 13 sustainable fisherman-owners with the hope of increasing that number to 20 by year’s end. The company also recently opened its own processing and packaging facility in Alaska to streamline its supply chain and leverage greater control of its product from the boat to the consumer, a process that today typically takes about 20 days from dock to dish and includes flash-freezing, transportation from Sitka to Galesburg, and then on to customers.
Read more at CivilEats.com.