PicoBlog

I recently came back from a stint in Europe where I found myself thinking about tinned fish more than I’d like to admit.

Every restaurant served sardines and every store had isles of beautifully packaged tinned fish. If toned-down luxuries were the staple, then tinned fish was the crown jewel.

Shortly after this, I saw a TikTok about a dinner party that only served canned seafood with 70k+ likes. Just like that, I was deep in a rabbit hole trying to understand why despite the appeal for tinned fish internationally, the US market still thinks of soggy tuna sandwiches.  

Maybe it’s that we associate canned foods with Spam. Or that the only canned fish the US is consistently exposed to is a mushy white tuna can. But everywhere, tinned fish is praised as the perfect quick meal packed with protein and healthy fats and comes in an array of flavors and packaged to perfection.

From the production, to the packaging, there's a luxury to eating tinned fish. Just see how the canning process is described: “The fish passes from hand to hand, in a journey of wisdom and taste that’s as old as the process of food preservation itself. The technique requires the hands of many people—mostly women, and on the production line we usually find several generations from the same family. Often, in the final stage of canning, experienced hands are brought in to wrap each can, with a mastery that time and repetition has helped perfect.”

There’ve been many attempts to improve the perception of tinned fish in the US: in 2014, Vogue published an article titled: “ Can You Serve Canned Food at a Dinner Party? (Yes, You Can!)”, since 2016 restaurants have opened in NY and Boston promoting their canned-fish-forward menus (only some of which are still open today), and just last year a handful of articles deemed tinned fish as the food of the summer.

Yet, I want to think that 2022 is the year tinned fish actually got traction:

There was some popularity in mid Nov 2020 and end of Feb 2021, I'm assuming fueled by Fishwife (more on this later). But in relative terms, summer of last year was quiet for its alleged spotlight. 

Now, it’s summer of this year when we’re seeing searches spike… What's causing it? Unconfirmed. But until I solve this mystery, here’s a quick look at two brands that give off that laid back, no frills, European luxury even if you’re just eating canned tuna at home:

Jose Gourmet was founded in the economic crisis of 2008 by two friends: Adriano Ribeiro, pilot, and Luís Mendonça, university design professor. They were passionate about Portuguese foods and frustrated by the lack of appreciation for them in the international market (Portugal of course is one of the biggest producers of tinned fish.)

Their brand is known for their creative packaging and sustainable ingredients and was inspired by children's storybooks. Each can is designed by different artists and includes a small story alongside the design. The result is a charming can that makes you do a double take.

Their focus on quality and design has put them in the boutique tinned fish category. Instead of selling their products via DTC or in traditional supermarkets, they’ve also approached gift stores, cafes, and boutique markets. This approach makes it so that everything from the shopping experience to opening one of their cans feels like buying a small gift, more than buying your groceries. 

They’ve relied on physical distribution so much so that they didn't start an Instagram account until 2015, 7 years after launching. And even now, their website is minimal, primarily listing out all the products that they sell in a long list format, but not offering a path to purchase. And while they do have an elevated aesthetic on instagram, there’s so much more they could be doing to untap their potential online.

Their slogan is “Somewhere between art and Portuguese gastronomy.” Their product and branding clearly align with their slogan, but I would love for them to also do more online. The internet is such a visual-first platform, and if you’re positioning yourself as art, then why not take this as a new medium on which to create?

Fishwife was started by Caroline Goldfarb, a comedian TV writer, and Becca Millstein while living together during the covid lockdowns in early 2020. Both tinned fish aficionados, they saw an opportunity for a US-based tinned fish company that could bring the love for tinned fish to their market. 

Just like their internet-native founders, they built and launched their company all remotely and online in a matter of 3 months. They locked in their initial distributors through zoom calls, designed their packaging and their first website themselves and enlisted illustrator, Danny Miller, for much of the brand aesthetic, a look they still use today.

They launched on instagram late August 2020 with a DTC model and a focus on growing community. Their first product was a “Beta Box” that contained 3 types of fish and was sold as the “Founding Fishwives” package where those who purchased would get to share feedback and be part of a close group of super fans. Just four months later, they got coverage on Vogue and Refinery 29.

But let's take a look at how they caught lightning in a bottle with their brand… 

The canned fish industry has been dominated by men, even the term “fishwife” referred to the fishermen’s wives that would hold down the fort and sell fish while their husbands were out fishing, and the term has grown to mean “a coarse-mannered woman who is prone to shouting.” 

Caroline and Becca adopted this term with wittiness and pride and used what was previously an insult, as their strength.

Everything about the brand has a feminine spin on it: The packaging uses pinks and greens as their color pallet and includes flowers and women illustrated on the cans. They partnered with female-owned fisheries to source the fish, their first set of Instagram posts were a collection of sea-inspired poetry by female writers, and even now, their collaborations include jewelry designers and female artists.

These overtly feminine efforts have made the love for the brand grow tenfold so much so that they’ve been able to grow without any paid ads.

Not to mention, their timing was also helpful. Having launched in the middle of a pandemic, they received a lot of attention around how brands were revitalizing the pantry staples.

Since launch, they’ve raised a seed round by Rose Street Capital and are expanding into retail.

That’s all for now, friend. Time for me to go back to my life and not think about tinned fish for a long, long time ✌️

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See you next time!

-Dani

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