Is there anything more unnerving than supermarket seafood? It’s a high-stakes game of roulette, and while most of the time you’re fine eating it, there is always that one unlucky person who ends up hunched over the toilet a few hours after consuming the oddly bright pink filet.
Not to mention the total disconnect we, as consumers, have with where it comes from and its journey to those fluorescent-lit, industrial refrigerators.
That’s exactly the problem that Juro and Adra set out to solve, although at first, they didn’t realize it would turn into a business.
Juro, a Slovakian native, came to Alaska years ago to work in the rich waters of Cordova. For 13 seasons, he worked at a fish processing plant: cleaning fish to start and then advancing into a general manager position.
A few years later, he met Adra at an immigration conference in Chicago. The two hit it off, and eventually Adra moved back to Alaska with Juro, where they would get married on a boat dubbed the ‘Whatever’ (they were ordained by its captain, Pip).
Between seasons, they often moved back and forth between Cordova and Brookfield, where Adra is from, bringing fresh seafood with them for friends and family. When they made the more permanent move back to Brookfield, they were often met with a “well how are we going to get our fish now?”
That’s where Alaska Fresh was born.
“We started just selling to friends and family, which turned out to be a great idea. They are wonderful people, very forgiving when you make a mistake, so that helped us work out a lot of bugs in our process.
After 5 years of nice organic growth without any advertising, we started putting more effort into our brand and finally last year went all in – quit our jobs and started giving Alaska Fresh Seafood our 100%.“
Milwaukee, despite being a ‘seafood desert’, ended up being a relatively strategic location for Juro and Adra to set up their warehouse and now, storefront. Wisconsin’s central position in the country has allowed them to streamline parts of their processing and shipping operations.
For them, it was really important to keep their connections to Alaska alive. Juro and Adra continue to visit and work with their local partner, Copper River Seafoods, to ensure the fish are ethically sourced and sustainably harvested.
This allows them to provide “door-to-door wild Alaskan seafood” in quantities fit for both individual households and commercial businesses.
“That’s all thanks to our direct connections and full access to the best wild seafood source on the planet – the pristine Alaskan waters. We know the fishermen, we go on their boats, we regularly visit our processors to have hands-on quality control, and at the same time we have boots on the ground in the Midwest to make sure we provide a consistent top-quality experience.”
Alaska Fresh is providing locals with an outlet for mindful consumption: you know which body of water your fish was caught in, how the fish were harvested, and the real faces behind the business.
In addition to their outlet store (next to their fulfillment center in Butler), they recently launched in Outpost.
They’re trying to make fresh seafood more accessible, and we’re here for it!