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77 | Adra Kusnirova's Deep Dive into Sustainable Seafood

• Ladies First Digital Media Company • Season 5 • Episode 77

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Who's on board to meet a female fishmonger? I am! I am! 

Meet Adra Kusnirova, a former international student program manager turned fishmonger.  As a former resident of Alaska, Adra came to know the fishing community intimately and held on to that attachment when she settled in Wisconsin. Together, with her husband, she started Alaska Fresh,  a Midwest beacon for sustainably sourced, wild-caught Alaskan seafood that can delivered right to your doorstep.  Their story isn't just about the catch; it's a deep plunge into passion and adaptability, showing us all how a love for quality and the environment can scale up into a thriving business that's as fresh as the catch itself.

Tune in as Adra and I discuss:

  • her efforts to support more Alaskan fishermen 
  • how climate change is affecting the fishing industry
  • what it means to be a sustainable fishing company and why not all fish farms should be avoided

If you love fish and learning about where your food comes from, then you'll want to tune into this episode. Join us to get hooked on the incredible tale of how one woman's leap into the seafood industry is making waves for the future of our planet.

Connect with Alaska Fresh and Adra:
www.alaskafreshsalmon.com
Instagram = https://www.instagram.com/alaskafreshsalmon/

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Speaker 1:

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Speaker 1:

Speaking of today, I have an awesome guest, as always, they're all awesome, but this one is a woman after my own heart. Her name is Adra Kushnerova and I met her in my Milwaukee entrepreneur group, and Adra is a female fishmonger. She runs a company called Alaska Fresh which brings amazingly delicious Alaskan seafood from the fishermen in Alaska right to your doorstep. So if you love high quality salmon, high quality halibut, you're going to want to hear Adra's story. Plus, she gives some really great tidbits about what it was like to live in Alaska. She has some interesting things that I've learned about the sustainable fish industry and just about what we should think about in terms of our food and climate change.

Speaker 1:

So tune in, get ready, we have a great episode coming up. Did she really do that, you, betcha? She did. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of you, Betcha. She Did the podcast where women entrepreneurs, changemakers and leaders, especially from the Midwest, share their wit and wisdom. If you love the Midwest, if you like supporting women, the show is for you. I'm your host, Reina Rikiki, and today I have a super interesting guest. As you heard in the intro, I have Adra here and she is a female fishmonger. That's not something you hear every day, right. So, Adra, welcome to the show.

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I love fishing, so you're kind of a girl after my own heart I know it's not I was the most popular sport and I love eating fish. So there's two halves right. I like fishing, I like eating fish. But I want to hear about how you switched careers, Because I know you used to be kind of in the business world helping connect services internationally, and then you switched to a side hustle with importing fish and salmon from Alaska. How did that happen?

Speaker 2:

Yes, good question. In a previous life, I was involved in bringing international students to the US to work in seasonal jobs and I ended up meeting my husband at a conference in that realm and at that point he was managing a fish processing plant in Alaska during the salmon season, which is from May until September. And so our romance blossomed and I ended up following him to Alaska and spending four seasons there, and then we relocated to Wisconsin full time. After we had been going back and forth, and At the end of each fishing season we were bringing boxes of salmon and halbit and all this delicious wild fish back for our friends and family, they were like oh my God, you're not going to Alaska anymore.

Speaker 2:

How are we going to get our fish? Yeah, oh no. Yeah, we were checking it as pieces of luggage on Alaska Airlines. It's the most cost effective way to do it. If you're going to Alaska, bring it back as luggage. Alaska Fresh was born and was a side hustle until 2020. When I left my career in immigration during the pandemic and I was so burnt out, all I had it in me to do was sell fish in a parking lot at my local farmer's market. The company has really grown since, with everyone cooking at home more and just being more attuned to their health and the benefits of eating wild fish.

Speaker 1:

You know what? That was a smart move on your part too, ending your career bringing international workers to the US, because with the pandemic it's like that's not going to happen anymore. Good on you for switching that. You said the business really started to flourish during the pandemic, which is awesome, because for a lot of people that was such a challenging time. What helped your business flourish, you said obviously people were looking, they were home, they were cooking, they were looking for really healthy food options. Tell us a little bit more about that, and how did it spread through word of mouth or advertising at all?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so people were, as you know, locked in their houses, in their kitchen, exploring more on social media, learning how to do things, which included cooking, and then the whole process of buying things was disrupted. So everyone got more comfortable with ordering, shopping online and ordering things to their home, and that is about half of our business model is frozen fish directly to your doorstep. So our shipping business grew and you had asked about how did it grow? Word of mouth. So, yeah, we started with friends and family.

Speaker 2:

God, I was sending really, really Craigslist looking emails. Yeah, my friend was like, yeah, your emails are good, but why don't you try MailChimp? And I was like, oh, and I have been using that in my other job, but it's just like the little thing you know. You're just trying to do your best when you're getting started. So, yeah, meager email list that's since grown and it was really helpful to start with friends and family, because with anything that you start, there were hiccups along the way. So we got a lot of good feedback from our forgiving network and we've just really improved our processes a lot over the last five years, which has helped us expanding into strangers who are now our regular customers.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's fantastic. Yeah, I agree with you. With any business you start, there's so much to learn, right, and there's definitely gonna be mistakes that you make, and that's okay, that's part of the process. But, yeah, if you can do it with a more gentle audience who is on the standing, that's a win. Tell me more, too, about where the fish come from in Alaska and I feel like you guys probably know the fishermen personally, right, because you've been up there. Like, tell us how it starts from the fish being in the Bering Sea or wherever, and then making their way to Wisconsin.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so that is really our shtick with being fishmongers is that we intimately know the fishing districts where our fish come from and we know the fishermen, we know the processors every step along the way. There's a lot of mystery and enigma with fish. If you go to the grocery store like you're not gonna see your source on the package, you might not even know if it's caught in the United States, and that's a barrier that we're trying to break down is so people have a direct path to know where their fish is coming from, the fishing fleet, where it's caught, and then that also helps the fishermen because it's just less layers in the supply chain. So we work with two fishing districts in South Central Alaska the Copper River fishing district and the Prince William Sound, and people who are listening may have heard of the Copper River fishing district. Copper River Salmon is the big to do in the beginning of the fishing season. People who are listening are probably or might be familiar with the Copper River fishing district.

Speaker 2:

Copper River Salmon is featured on fancy restaurant menus. You see it as a specialty in the deli case of boutique grocery stores and it's actually rolled out on a red carpet when the first Copper River Salmon is caught in May. Alaska Airlines flies it from Alaska to Seattle on the Salmon 40 Salmon it's a real thing. It's cool. The Alaska Airlines just redid the artwork with an Indigenous artist. But yes, they have like a salmon and it's blown down and there's a big to do.

Speaker 2:

And why is it so special? Because it is super high in omega 3 fatty acids. And when you see the salmon meat it's redder than anything you've ever seen and it's like, oh my God, this is what salmon meat is supposed to look like. A lot of people have had bad experiences where they're scarred from eating salmon at like apple bees or you know local diner. Not to slam apple bees I do get carried out from apple bees from time to time but there is a difference between wild caught salmon, salmon that's been swimming in the ocean for five to seven years, building up it's like free range meat. Our fish are free range.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I was just watching, actually, this I think it was a Netflix special all about health and they took these sets of twins and they raised one on like a vegan diet and one on a very healthy omnivore diet and they were talking about the importance of getting wild caught fish versus farm raised salmon. And they went and they were talking about and they were showing the actual the salmon farms and just like the state that the fish are in is just not very healthy and the water quality, just because they're so jam packed tight. And it was really eye opening for me because I love fish but I don't often get wild caught. But now I'm like now I really want to buy wild caught. You know, just seeing the difference in the quality, like you said, the it's like free range versus like a large cattle farm, it's like it's going to be a totally different product, for sure.

Speaker 2:

There's different nuances. There are good fish farms. When I first got into this business, I was like fish farms are bad. Down with fish farms because I'm like promoting wild fish. But you have to consider that there are I don't know how many billions of people on the planet now and just from scale and feeding everyone and like location wise and from an affordability standpoint, we do need farmed food in all capacities and that includes fish farms. There's a really cool fish farm in Wisconsin actually called Superior Fresh and they do hydroponics with indoor fish and then growing vegetation on the top, and I want to point that out because there are good fish farms. To source from Wild is definitely better because the fish have a better quality of life. They're in better water quality. There are issues with fish farms that are in the ocean. They're called open net or open pen fish farms.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think that's what I saw on the show.

Speaker 2:

Yeah was it in the ocean? Yes, okay, yeah, so those fish can escape, they can cross breed with the wild fish and then you know, kind of mix up their DNA. They're sometimes known as Frankenfish among biologists. And then you have, depending on, like you said, if they're in cramped conditions, they're swimming amongst their feces and food pellets. And then you also have to consider the carbon footprint of feeding farmed fish, because it takes carbon to make the food to feed the fish, whereas the wild fish are eating wild food sources that are in the ocean.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's good to know, though, that there are better versions of fish farms out there, more sustainable versions, because, like you said, there are billions of people on the planet and we all need to eat and there's price points and things like that, so let's look at better options. But speaking of the best option, which is Alaska Fresh, where can we find your delicious fish? What are the ways that we can interact with it and order it?

Speaker 2:

Thanks for asking. We have an online store it's AlaskaFreshSamancom, and there we have all of our wild varieties of fish, which include four different types of salmon, halibut, sablefish, rockfish. We have three different kinds of smoked salmon and we have pet treats for your fur babies. And you can also find us locally in several retail locations. We're at Stonebank Farm Market in Lake Country and we're at Batter Mack and Total Health in Menominee Falls, and then we're also at the Menominee Falls Winter Farmers Market, which is every other Saturday through April at the North Middle School from 10 am to 2 pm, and there's a lot of other awesome local vendors there couple free range meat sellers, mushroom monger and a lot of other great local vendors Awesome.

Speaker 1:

And I'll have Alaska Fresh linked in the show notes. So if you are interested in tasting some very delicious salmon or halibut, please check out that link. Or, like Adri said, if you are in the Menominee Falls area, check out the Winter Farmers Market. Now you were talking about the Copper River Salmon and that season starts in May. Is there a way we can get in on that kind of fish? Ordering the new batch of salmon?

Speaker 2:

Yes, so we have a really low stock of the 2023 harvest left that we anticipate is gonna sell out by the end of this month and you can get that on our website, and once that happens, then we'll be taking pre-orders for the season.

Speaker 2:

So you are essentially locking in your reservation of mother nature's bounty, which is a good idea to do when working with wild food, because there's a lot of risks in this business. But one of the risks is, since we're not a farm, we can't guarantee what is going to come out of the ocean. There's a really intricate system and a really unique system in Alaska of fisheries management that is comprised of biologists, appointed government officials, the processors and the fishermen to make sure that the wildcatch is not overfished, which is a huge problem throughout the planet overfishing and Alaska has really strict regulations to make sure that that doesn't happen and so that fish return for generations and generations of use. And so when you pre-order and reserve your wildcatch, if the regulators were to say like hey, there's gonna be a really small harvest this year, then you have already locked in your reservation to get the Copper River salmon.

Speaker 1:

Speaking of that, have you noticed a lot of differences, just changes, that are going on in Alaska from the times that you and your husband were there until recently, anything from just the state of the economy or the fish populations.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's a really good question. There have been a lot of changes since we left in 2017. One that's like a blaring image in my mind is this glacier that's within driving distance of the community where we lived and the community where our fishermen live, where our fish are processed. It's called Cordova, and another reason it's special is because you can only get there by a boat or plane. There's no road that connects it to any other neighboring communities. So once we were there for the summer, we were there. It's super remote and there's a glacier you can drive to and that glacier has definitely receded. I had some friends visit last year and they sent us pictures. They showed us like, oh, we're at the same glacier and it was like so far back. So, from a visibility standpoint, that's happening. The temperatures are rising, but it's not really affecting fish catch yet and, like I said, there's such a like connected pulse on the fishery by all of the stakeholders with the management that's also helped make sure that the fish are still coming back.

Speaker 2:

For us in the lower 48, which is another way to say the continental United States we're definitely noticing it with shipping fish in the summer. Shipping a frozen product in the age of climate change is really tricky. We have had customers pre-order and then we've had to put like a hiatus on their shipping. If they have extreme heat advisories, which is anywhere over 110 degrees for an extended period of time, we ship with dry ice. Okay, yep, we've been fine tuning that. So I think that's been more or like if there's wildfires in the areas, we've had to put shipping on hold. So that's, it's been affected. The shipping in the lower 48, alaska is getting record snowfall this year. They've been in the waters recently. They have had over a hundred inches of snow so far, which is like more. That's usually like what they get in a full season, so we will see how that affects the fishing season this year. Hopefully that'll be a good thing, because there will be more snow melt.

Speaker 1:

Exactly, the rivers will be running like crazy, right, wow, okay, well, thanks for those updates. Logistically, I hadn't thought about what it's like to ship fish frozen and things you have to take into account, so that's pretty fascinating. Just those interesting problems you have to solve, right? You're like, all right, now we're gonna pivot, I go this way and then this way. Yeah, here we go. So you guys have been in business for several years now. What kind of plans do you have for the future? Do you have any five-year goals or things you really like to hit coming up as a milestone?

Speaker 2:

Yes, we have a lot of exciting plans. We just actually kind of finish putting our goals together. So this is a timely question. We are planning to start a loan program for fishermen where we will provide very low interest loans lower than they would be able to get from the banks to get them up and started or through the beginning of the fishing season.

Speaker 2:

So the fish that we sell is expensive. We sell in five-pound boxes. Online you can get smaller quantities, but the most common product is a five-pound box. So that ranges from $70 for five pounds of pink salmon to $320-ish for five pounds of king salmon. Our cover of our sock guy is right in the middle, that's 100, well, towards the lower end, $140. But my point is that a lot of people they see that and they're like, oh my God, that's crazy to pay that much for fish, but they don't realize what goes into everything behind it. So all the fishing commercial fishing is permitted and commercial fishermen depending on the market price, they may have to pay upwards of a quarter million dollars for a fishing permit.

Speaker 1:

Wow, wow, yeah, that's a lot of money.

Speaker 2:

Holy cow. And then they have the expenses of their fishing vessel or their boat, which starts at $200,000 on the lower end. It's like a house. So they have a mortgage on a boat and then if their engine blew out last season, well then they have to replace that. Our fish are caught by a gill net, which is basically like a tennis net that's made by hand. There's net menders on the docks and in like pole barns up in Alaska that are making these. So if they get a tear in their net then they have the net expense. And I could go on and on. And fuel prices are going up. So we want to be able to provide lower interest loans for the fishermen. So we're going to pilot that program this year, and then we're also planning on expanding into more retail locations with a partner food broker who just happened to stop by our farmer's market booth in Waukesha this past summer and was like hey, we business together.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that was definite kismet. So we're working on getting into three local chains and just expanding our operations and our offerings. There are so many salmon eaters in the lower 48 and we want everyone to be able to have access to it, so to continue to grow our business. And, of course, social media. Like I need to be better on social- media. I know it's a lot.

Speaker 1:

Well, those sounds like great goals, though, and great things to strive for in the future, and I just want to thank you for coming on the show and also helping the kind of like seafood desert that is the Midwest have more access to really good, high quality, fresh fish from a beautiful place, a beautiful part of the world. So thank you for doing that. If you want to learn more about Adra and Alaska Fresh, please check our show notes. I'll have all the relevant links there. Definitely give it a try. I'm sure you will not be disappointed. Only, your taste buds will be screaming with happiness, as always. If you like what you're hearing on you, betcha, she did. Don't forget to share this episode with a friend, a neighbor, a fellow fish lover. You know they were out there. Thank you for doing that, and until next time, take care.