Fish market tries new approaches

The world-famous Fulton Fish Market is struggling to stay afloat during the coronavirus crisis.

A chunk of its business has dried up with mandatory restaurant closures across the country, so sellers are looking for ways to scale up sales direct to consumers.

“We’re in uncharted territory. If this continues to get worse and worse, we should open up Fulton to the public. Let them load up so they don’t have to wait online at Costco,” Eddie Monani of Joe Monani Fish Co.

The fabled Fulton Fish Market is open to wholesale customers only. If restaurant closures continue as expected, many of the co-op’s 20 members won’t survive, Monani said.

“There’s going to be a shaking out of a good half of us,” he said.

“My sales are already down about 20%, and I’m very, very diversified. I sell a lot of different items to supermarkets and retail stores. The restaurant distributors are done. They’re not going to pay what they owe,” he said.

Monani has already laid off two members of his 30-person staff. Another wholesaler is letting 17 people go Friday, he said.

“We’ve never seen anything like this before. Of course 9/11 was very, very difficult because most of Manhattan was shut down, and we were thrown up in the Bronx, working out of a parking lot. But everybody got through it. We all survived. It was a hiccup for us,” he explained.

“This is different. All the way around, in a 360 degree circle, we have a major problem,” he said.

Whatever happens with Monani’s idea to let consumers inside the New

Fulton Fish Market in the Bronx, athome customers already have a chance to go online for some of the two million pounds of fresh seafood rolling through the doors each night.

FultonFishMarket.com, the official online store working with cooperative members like Monani, has seen its consumer sales surge this week amid a cratering of restaurant business.

“Our restaurant and consumer categories just flip-flopped,” Ryan Fibiger, CEO of the website told The News.

He said consumer order volume was up more 100% nationally and close to 200% in the New York area.

“The majority of this growth is coming from new customers, which is really exciting to see people purchasing fish only online for the first time,” Fibiger said. “Trust has always been the biggest hurdle for online grocery in general, but fish in particular.”

With growth on the consumer end, his business-to-business sales were “down by half,” he said.

“Clearly restaurant sales are slowing down to almost a complete halt,” he said. “It’s precipitous. That’s a reasonable word to use.”

He said his consumer orders have been shipping via FedEx without any problems amid the pandemic, and research is underway for a same-day courier service in the New York area, he said.

“We brought down our minimums to make it as easy as possible,” Fibiger explained, saying the site now offers free delivery with orders of $125 or more, instead of the prior $150 threshold.

“We’re trying to simplify everything. Take all the friction out,” he said.

“Fish freezes great, probably better than any protein,” he said. “If we can see a silver lining to this situation, it might be that more people get comfortable with the idea of buying their fresh fish online.”