Seafood Delivery Safety Standards Used at FreshDirect
The secret to exceptionally fresh seafood is a strong supply chain and close relationships with fishing partners. At FreshDirect, we directly source seafood from trusted fisheries that are local to our New York City headquarters, as well as from those located across the globe. No matter who we’re working with, we carefully vet potential partners to ensure that they meet our high expectations. We expect full transparency from them, as well as a commitment to the most rigorous standards of sustainable sourcing and environmental accountability. We get to know them well, so much so that we’re on a first-name basis with most of the fishermen whom we trust to bring us their best products.
This strict emphasis on quality and freshness in cooperation with our partners means that FreshDirect seafood is among the most safe and reliable to consume. Because FreshDirect is an online platform built around a single warehouse location, there are no retail and distribution networks slowing down the movement of seafood from the docks to your door.
Traditional grocery stores rely on distributors for their seafood, which add to the number of steps required for products to reach you. It’s not uncommon for some fish to be transported to multiple stops across the globe before it’s ready for the consumer market, which leads to longer times in transit. Once it’s in your local store, it spends days languishing in the seafood case, exposed to the elements—even the lighting can have a negative impact. After you’ve purchased it, each moment it spends in transit is a moment away from the ideal conditions needed to keep your seafood at its best. All in all, it’s an inefficient chain of events in which valuable time and care is lost, leading to lesser quality and an increased risk of spoilage and contamination.
On the other hand, FreshDirect is able to minimize the time between sourcing and delivering fish to you because our team is communicating directly with the people doing the catching and harvesting. Whether it’s salmon, shrimp, tuna, or one of our many other seafood varieties, we have full insight into how your seafood is being sourced and know every last detail about the product we’re receiving. And by dealing directly with fishermen, we’re able to maintain the cold chain from catch or harvest to delivery to our facilities and onto our trucks. For highly-perishable items like seafood, this is of utmost importance. And since food is made to go in and out of our facility—not sit on a shelf—we’re able to focus on keeping food in the ideal conditions for for freshness, instead of worrying about how it looks on the supermarket floor.
If you’ve ordered seafood from us ahead of your delivery date, there’s a good chance that it hasn’t even been caught yet. Even when we’re working with our overseas partners, the process is seamless and quick. For example, our wild cod and haddock partners at IceMar in Iceland will place their freshly-caught fish on ice, bring it to the local docks, drive a mere 20 minutes to the airport, and load it onto a plane that reaches JFK in about 5 hours. Then, it goes directly to our warehouse in The Bronx, where it’s held in its own area at the optimal temperature. Within a few more hours, it can be cut to order, loaded onto our refrigerated trucks, and delivered with the rest of your FreshDirect items. This streamlined process is simply not possible for the majority of grocers, so we can confidently say that you’re getting the freshest product possible and it’s 100% traceable to its source.
Our team takes extra steps to ensure that your seafood is handled as safely as possible. After freshly-caught whole fish arrives at our headquarters, it stays in the container it was brought to us in and only comes out once you’ve placed your order—when we say we custom cut to order, we mean it. It is touched just one time by the person who fillets and portions the fish to each customer’s specifications. We wrap it in antimicrobial paper as an added measure to ensure that it is securely protected.
In the world of seafood, safety extends to areas even beyond care and handling. When sourcing fish from the wild, we make sure that our partners are doing so responsibly and not engaging in practices that may irresponsibly deplete local populations or endanger marine environments. As for farmed fish, we only work with fisheries that practice sustainability in every sense of the word, from the ways in which they use energy to power their operations to ensuring that no unnecessary substances are used that could negatively impact you, the fish, or the surrounding environment. We adhere to the guidelines set by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) and the Monterey Bay Seafood Watch, so you’ll never see any red-listed seafood in our assortment. That’s why we only offer Icelandic cod or branzino from Greece—it’s the regulations in places like these that ensure there is no ambiguity as to whether fisheries are following the best practices.
In short, FreshDirect’s unique supply chain model offers advantages in speed and handling that most retail grocers just can’t match. We’re built to process and deliver seafood while keeping it in its optimal condition along every step of the way, so there are virtually no obstacles to handling and storing fish safely. Additionally, our commitment to environmental sustainability means that your seafood is sourced responsibly, completely traceable, and falls in line with the best practices recommended by regulatory organizations. By eliminating the storefront and fostering a direct connection between you and fishermen, we are able to ensure a level of safety and quality that is rarely available to the average consumer.
Tips for storing seafood after delivery
With our seafood items on FreshDirect, we offer a freshness guarantee for how many days after delivery you can expect your items to stay in peak condition. Keep in mind—these are only the minimum number of freshness days we guarantee. With appropriate care, you may enjoy even more.
During this period and until you’re ready to use it, you must keep your seafood in a refrigerator at a temperature of no more than 40 F. Before preparing it, make sure to thoroughly clean and sanitize all utensils and surfaces. In the event that you cannot use your seafood within the freshness period, many varieties can be frozen for longer storage. To thaw, it is recommended that you store it in the refrigerator until it has defrosted.