Farmed salmon brand Secret Island Salmon has established a partnership with meal-delivery service CookUnity to distribute its products across the U.S.
Secret Island, which was launched by Puerto Montt, Chile-based Salmones Austral in October 2021, had been supplying New York City, U.S.A.-based CookUnity with its salmon for around one year before this more involved partnership came to fruition, Secret Island U.S. Business Development Head Daniel Del Coro told SeafoodSource.
“We’ve been building on the partnership as they continue to scale their operations. It’s been fantastic to work with them,” Del Coro said. “That’s expected to grow over time as they continue to expand.”
The collaboration will see CookUnity feature Secret Island products in all of the salmon dishes it offers, and in tandem with the deal, Secret Island is also ramping up its relationship with celebrity chef Jose Garces, who has starred in Iron Chef and other food-focused television shows.
Garces has previously worked with CookUnity, sharing his receipes with the delivery service's subscribers, so Del Coro said he “saw the opportunity to connect the dots between supplier, chef, and platform and have all three parties work together to tell the story of our shared supply and value chain.
"[We're shwoing] literally how this salmon gets from our farm to the table of CookUnity customers," Del Coro said.
That trifold relationship was forged after Garces, Del Coro, and CookUnity CEO and Co-Founder Mateo Marietti toured Secret Island’s Chilean operations.
“We spent a week at each stage of our supply chain, educating the teams about responsibly farm-raised salmon,” Del Coro said.
The CookUnity and Garces partnerships represent just one step along the path toward achieving Secret Island’s ambitious sales strategy, Del Coro said.
Secret Island began exclusively as an e-commerce brand but paused its digital sales recently to launch its products in physical stores and expand into foodservice. Del Coro said that the move was not due to a lack of success in the digital sales channel but, rather, has provided the company with some breathing room to align its omnichannel strategy properly.
“It was important to slow down the process, get it right, and activate our full-fledged strategy,” Del Coro said. “This is purposeful and planned and has been part of our strategic planning [for a while]. We have always set out to build this brand and build our product line [as] full-fledged omnichannel from inception.”
In September 2023, Secret Island pivoted to natural and specialty retail channel with a launch of its products and an edgy marketing campaign at Natural Products Expo East in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.
“We want to be in regional chains before we go to mass national chains and club stores,” Del Coro said. “It is purposeful, measured growth in order to build for the long haul. We want to build really durable supply chains and build on the success over time.”
The long-term vision, according to Del Coro, is to ...
