#110 Blog Post - A Roaring New Business

http://dennyhatch.blogspot.com/2020/10/110-blog-post-roaring-new-business.html

#110 Blog Post – Thursday, October 1, 2020

 

Posted by Denny Hatch

 

Roaring New Business—Amidst Covid-19—Created

In Just Six Weeks by Neophyte Direct Marketer!

 

Robert Amar, Founder and Proprietor of SmallWorldSeafood.com

One day in late March our friend Marjory on the 29^th floor alerted Peggy that a guy was selling superb seafood that we could order by email (or phone) and pick it up the next day across the street.

 

Really?

 

We signed on, ordered mussels and salmon on Thursday, picked up the order from the truck on Friday afternoon and had two marvelous meals:

 

        • Mussels in white wine and garlic on Friday.

        • Glorious grilled salmon on Sunday.

 

We quickly became regular customers.

 

A Business Built by Word-of-Mouth

Robert Amar spent 25 years in the restaurant business. As a former restaurateur and savvy entrepreneur, he had done everything—owned eateries and worked with fledgling and experienced restaurateurs on wine tasting programs, staffing, menus, kitchen design, recipes, writing ads—the works.

 

 Four years ago he launched a thriving wholesale business selling the world’s freshest, finest seafood to top tier Philadelphia restaurants from his warehouse in the massive Packer Avenue Marine Terminal.

 

As Robert tells it, his world—Small World Seafood—was turned topsy-turvy one day in early March. He had amassed a large inventory of fresh fish ordered by his clients who were expecting to feed the usual crowds on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Suddenly the Coronavirus-19 catastrophe hit that Monday and Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney ordered the closing of all restaurants, leaving Robert high and dry.

 

Not willing to simply throw out his stores of splendid seafood, Robert went to his block captain’s email list of Fairmount area neighbors and described his predicament. 

 

His offer: Don’t let my wonderful fresh mussels, scallops and salmon go to waste. Take them FREE!  He couldn’t deliver house-to-house, but his truck would be parked on the corner of Woodstock Street from 2:00 to 3:30 where they could pick up their free fish.

 

Robert not only got a bunch of takers, but also email requests and phone calls asking if they could buy other fish—say swordfish or shrimp. The available swordfish was not top quality that week, but he could get great shrimp, frozen cod and marvelous canned crabmeat from East Coast waters. Plus branzino from Greece. He got 28 customers for free fish; and a number of folks ordered other selections and paid online by credit card.

 

A Funny Thing Happened…

The following day the Amar truck arrived on time and the masked customers formed a (socially distanced) line to pick up their orders.

 

Andy Farrell presents an order from the truck.

Behind him is direct marketer Robert Amar.

 

Neighbors in the next block noticed the ado on Woodstock Street and beetled over to see what was going on. When they heard the story, they not only phoned and emailed orders for free fish, but also asked if they could tell their friends and family. Sure. Why not? One member of the crowd that day was Robert’s long-time buddy, Andy Farrell, who had just been laid off from the popular City Tap House which was suddenly out of business. The following week, with Andy helping, Amar had 150 orders.

 

The Word-of-Mouth Miracle.

Over the next few weeks people all over center city heard about the new service—absolutely fresh seafood available for pick-up right in their neighborhood. They tried it, loved it and not only became regulars but told their friends and family around town. In the next few weeks the email list expanded exponentially. Robert and Andy hit the jackpot when condo owners at the Philadelphian—the massive luxury building across from the Philadelphia Museum of art with 753 housing units—learned of the new business

 

A week later the customer base had expanded across town to our 44-story St. James Tower. Our friend Marjory told us and Peggy immediately emailed the residents on the building e-bulletin board.

 

Today Robert and Andy have an email list of 3,000 customers that generates roughly 300 orders a day.

 

Beauty Shot from www.smallworldseafood.com

 

How Robert Amar Created a Brand New

Direct-to-Consumer Business in 6 Weeks

In the world of marketing, a supplier of seafood to restaurants would be pigeon-holed as a  b2b—business-to-business—operation. This means large orders of seafood delivered to relatively few high-rollers. Overnight Amar became b2c—busines-to-consumers—direct selling small orders to many individual households.

       

A Changed—and Far More Complex—Business Model

Here are the new elements:

 

• Big Customer List. As new orders came in, names, addresses, emails and telephone numbers must be recorded in a format for emailing offers.

 

• Preparation. Every family knows how to cook beef, bacon, chicken, hot dogs and ribs. Seafood is different. Early on Robert found many needed guidance on how to cook the many varieties of seafood. On his website is an extensive repertoire of world-class, easy-to-prepare recipes including YouTube links, so nothing is left to chance.

 

• Delivery. Obviously Robert can’t deliver orders to hundreds of individual households, apartments and condos. So his instructions for pick-up are absolutely precise and easy-to-understand.

DIRECT TO CONSUMER RITTENHOUSE/FITLER/WASHINGTON SQUARES FRIDAY PICK UPS-SIGN UP HERE

CRAZY TIMES CALL FOR CRAZY MEASURES. WE HAVE STARTED BRINGING SEAFOOD DIRECTLY TO YOU. WE HAVE A SIGN UP FORM BELOW FOR RITT/FITLER. WE EMAIL ORDER FORMS ONCE A WEEK ON THURSDAYS AT 9AM FOR PICK UPS ON FRIDAYS. THREE PICK UP LOCATIONS FROM 11AM TO 3PM INCLUDE  AT THE CORNER OF TANEY ST AND PINE ST FROM 11AM TO 11:55AM, IN FRONT OF THE ETHICAL SOCIETY FROM 12PM TO 1:30PM  AS WELL AS WASHINGTON SQUARE FROM 2PM-3PM. I CURATE THE SEAFOOD SELECTION TO BRING YOU THE FRESHEST THE SEA HAS TO OFFER.

 

• The Weekly Newsletter. I asked Robert if he had a professional copywriter. His response, “Nah. I do it all myself.” His copy is fun and upbeat—a delight to read.

 

After all, these are his kind of people. He has known them for 25 years—how they think and what they feel. They are literate—as is Robert Amar. He emphatically does not need a hired copywriter to talk to them!

 

(Dare I call them a-fish-cianados?)

 

A Dramatic Expansion!

Here's the October 13th Email.

 

Small World Seafood Update – October 13, 2020
From: SMALL WORLD SEAFOOD <smallworldseafood@gmail.com>

GOOD MORNING EVERYONE!!

Last week was a ton of fun!! I love to see all the Instagram photos of people preparing clams and skate wing and setting up beautiful cheese plates. We are grateful to Ann at Third Wheel Cheese Co for providing us with the opportunity to have some good cheese at home. We will definitely do this again with her in a few weeks.

So, selling cheese along with seafood really doesn't make a lot of sense on the surface of things. What does cheese have to do with seafood? Not much, huh? If you think of things in another way, however, we are coming to you anyway, right? Most of us are not really leaving our neighborhood much and we don't really want to go to supermarkets to browse. We are in and out of those places faster that a Ritz cracker walking into a gluten free convention. Also, we are not exploring the city for interesting things much anymore like we used to so we are unaware of what is available in other parts. Well, let me tell you, there is some cool stuff happening out there. Some businesses are Covid born. Others, like us, are Covid pivots. 

Since we are the mules coming to your neighborhood anyway, why not feature some of the cool stuff that is out there? You can try it and maybe you go to them for more. So, we'll be trying to feature some businesses over the next few weeks that we think are pretty damn cool. Who knows. Maybe we'll just keep doing it. Hopefully, you will support them too. We are talking about bagels, breads, babkas, coffee, maybe meats and, of course, you know about the cheese.

This week, we will be offering an appetizer and dessert to complement your fabulous meals. The first is from my good friend, Pierre Calmels, owner of Bibou restaurant (biboubyob.com). He has decided to pivot from high end prix-fixe dinners to making French goodies such as pates, sausages and meal boxes. How do you operate a restaurant when you only had 22 seats and try to function at 25% or 50%? You can't. He is one of the best French chefs in the city so whatever he makes will be exceptional.

Pierre is going to prepare escargots in garlic herb butter for you all! How does that work? He will be portioning a dozen escargots which he cooks in a wine stock for a few hours and placing them in an aluminum container with a chilled slice of garlic herb butter (French butter, course) that can be heated in your oven to bring it all together. Get yourself some baguettes and indulge! The price will be $18 per dozen. A notable restaurant on Rittenhouse Square sells 5 escargots for $15 so this is quite a bargain and the quality will be unmatched. 

The final course of your dinner will come from Oui Pastries in Old City (ouipastries.com). The owner CJ does some really inventive stuff with her baking. She even provides baking kits for people to prepare their own pastries at home. Good fun. She will be producing a sampler box of desserts, 4 per, for you all to enjoy. We will describe them fully in Thursday's order form email. We look forward to working with both of these creative spirits.

And now onto fish... finally. This time of year brings some fish we don't normally see at other times of the year. We played with red drum and speckled trout (more this week, hopefully) from North Carolina in the past two weeks. Locally, we've secured a boat load of fresh albacore tuna for you all!! You may have seen Andy, Brian and I playing with albacore over the weekend on our instagram page, @smallworldseafood. I poached mine in olive oil and make a puttanesca pasta. Andy smoked his over cherry wood and Brian sesame crusted his and served it with bok choy and shiitake mushrooms. There is a lot you can do with this fish. It is totally underrated because of canned tuna stories. 

The great thing about it, too, is that it is much cheaper than its bigger brothers Yellowfin and Big Eye. At $12lb skinless and fully cleaned, you have a pretty cheap tuna you can sear, braise or preserve. I tell you, you may have the best tuna Nicoise if you do it right!

I am trying to make up for the lack of speckled trout last week and things look good. That being said, I will confirm on Thursday if we have it.

One sad note is that we may be saying goodbye to scallops after this week for a bit. The prime season is about to end soon and prices are going up. Usually when that happens, quality decreases as well. Think of tomatoes in January. Expensive and hard to find a good one. Same with fish. They freeze very well if you want to stock up a bit. We will feature them again when we find a good crop at a good price. Promise. 

Mussels are back this week and we will be going back to Massachusetts for oysters. This time we will be introducing Model T's from the Duxbury area. I believe that travelling around through food can energize the spirit. It's not the same, I know, but it can be the next best.

 Anyway, that's a lot of blah blah blah and blah blah blee from me. I can talk forever, as my wife will attest. In fact, one year around this time, I challenged everyone in my family to pick a costume for me for Halloween and i would do it. They picked mime...go figure...

Look out for the order form Thursday at 9am.

Best,

Robert Amar

Small World Seafood

Owner

 

Takeaways to Consider

• Obviously when (and if) Covid-19 eventually fades away, Amar can immediately revert wholesaling to restaurants again.

 

• But what of this retail business? Quite simply Robert loves it! “I’m meeting and talking to all kinds of people,” he gushes. “I listen. They tell me what I’m doing right and doing wrong. In this business, you have to listen.”

 

• Small World Seafood is not scalable, according to Robert. He does not have infrastructure and staff to take it throughout America’s sixth largest city with its 5.7 million population spread out over 141.7 miles. He’s pretty much maxed out.

 

• Robert Amar is truly a Renaissance Man. In the 50 years of making 

a living in direct marketing, I cannot recall knowing an individual 

who created a profitable direct marketing operation in six weeks 

with zero experience in the business.

 

• What’s more, in my 50 working years I cannot recall a business 

founded entirely on word-of-mouth advertising.

 

• Do you have a friend, family member or business colleague suddenly outta work for whatever reason? Is it "Alas... oh-woe-is-me time? What am I gonna do?" Forward this post. Okay, it's a niche business model. But I believe it's an inspiration that can fire up the creative juices and give a reason to jump out of bed in the early a.m. and...

       Don't lose your confidence if you slip,
       Be grateful for a pleasant trip,
       And pick yourself up,
       Dust yourself off,
       Start all over again.

            —Dorothy Fields/Jerome Kern

              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGUsRGuZb6k

 

Thank you.

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