“If it starts going $14 a kilo, you ain’t going to get people buying it”

Overall, Pierless Fish owner says there’s less fish on the menu in New York. Says US consumers won’t buy salmon at a high price.

Pierless Fish, North East’s largest seafood distributor, is definitely seeing a pick up in activity in restaurants in New York.

Back to work
But while its true that the White House recently announced that USA restaurants and bars are back to pre-pandemic levels of business, owner Bobby DeMasco has noticed businesses are struggling to get staff back to work.

“They don’t have the manpower so they have to dumb down their menus,” he said. “So restaurants that had maybe 12 fish on it, now only have five or six. Restaurants are open but they are not doing the numbers they could. And that’s the problem,” he added.

Pierless Fish deliver fish to some of the city and state’s most famous restaurants. Last year, it was acquired by Baldor Specialty Foods, one of the largest wholesale importers and distributors of fresh produce and specialty foods in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions.

Brand loyalty
On salmon, he said that the price has been “up and down”.

“I feel like in the USA we don’t have brand loyalty. Like there are some who want Norwegian, Chilean and Scottish,” he said, adding that Scottish and Norwegian is for “high end”.

“Salmon is a name stay in the US. But people will only pay a certain amount of money for it. If it starts going USD 14 a kilo, you ain’t going to get people buying it,” he said.

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