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500,000 lobsters a year
Pacific delivers ocean of seafood to
LV
restaurants
By Mark Hansel,
staff Writer In Business
Las Vegas
October 17, 2008
Pacific
delivers ocean of seafood to LV restaurants
There is no shortage of fish in
the desert.
Seafood has always been a
popular menu item in
Las Vegas
and with high-profile chefs looking to add a signature seafood dish to
help distinguish their menus this fish story just keeps getting
bigger.
How big, one may ask.
One distributor, Pacific
Seafood, just opened a 35,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art facility
to keep up with the demand for lobster, mahi-mahi, salmon and a host
of other seagoing creatures.
The Oregon-based distributor,
founded in 1941, offers more than 1,200 fresh and frozen seafood items
at the new facility on
Wynn Road
.
"The opening of this new
location is a result of our growth and desire to supply the freshest
and (most) diverse product line available," said Frank Dulcich,
president and chief executive of Pacific Seafood Group. "This
facility will help Pacific Seafood meet the needs of our distribution
customer base while using the latest technology and resources in fresh
and frozen seafood processing and distribution."
Although the number of
individual items processed is hard to gauge because it varies based on
demand and availability, one product that is tracked is lobster.
The facility ships more than
10,000 live lobsters a week to casinos and restaurants in
Las Vegas
. That's half a million lobsters every year from just one distributor.
"It's a very competitive
market, and there are a lot of the sophisticated buying practices at
the big casinos," Dulcich said. "To do business in
Las Vegas
you have to be good at what you do in both quality and
resources."
Freshness and quality are
crucial to the success of a seafood company, and Pacific Seafood uses
several methods to ensure the quality of its products.
Pacific Seafood is vertically
integrated, which means it is involved in every phase of processing
including catching the fish, so its seafood is scrutinized by in-house
personnel every step of the way. By following its products from dock
to dinner table or boat to throat, if you will, the company monitors how items
are caught, stored and delivered.
Lobster, for example, is staged
in a shower system as opposed to the traditional bathtub system in
which the lobsters are stored in a container. The shower continually
cascades the lobsters with water, so they are not just sitting in
bacteria or ammonia and water.
The company also provides fresh
fish cut from whole, underozonated water. The ozone in the water works
as an oxidizing agent and kills 99 percent of bacteria, an essential
step in seafood safety.
Numbers are not available by
state, but the average American eats about 15 pounds of seafood a
year. The top 10 types of fish, based on consumption, are shrimp,
canned tuna, salmon, pollock, tilapia, catfish, crab, cod, clams and
flatfish.
Gavin Gibbons, a media
representative for the National Fisheries Institute, said seafood is
popular in
Las Vegas
for the same reason a lot of other things are.
"People come to
Las Vegas
for vacation and celebration," Gibbons said. "They are
likely to try something they don't get at home and that often includes
some type of fish."
Dulcich said exact consumption
numbers are not available, but it's fair to say that based on
distribution, seafood consumption in
Las Vegas
is among the highest in the country. He said this is largely because
there are more buffets in
Las Vegas
than anywhere else and seafood is a staple at buffets.
In addition, casinos require
employees dine in-house and employee dining rivals that of the
buffets. There is more of a focus on diet now, and most seafood is
considered a healthy option.
Dulcich said
Las Vegas
has come a long way from the days when a shrimp cocktail was the big
attraction. Although shrimp is still popular, salmon, crab, lobster,
swordfish and several varieties of tuna are also in high demand.
Because all of the high-profile
chefs want to offer something different, special requests for exotic
offerings such as squid and cuttlefish are also common.
As
Las Vegas
has diversified, items used in ethnic cuisines have seen an increase
in demand. New favorites include fish tacos, monkfish and shrimp
heads.
Some fish, such as salmon, is
chosen for its distinctive flavor, while tilapia has become popular
because it easily takes on the flavor of spices and sauces.
The slumping economy has made it
more difficult to gauge the
Las Vegas
market, but Dulcich said there is a lot of flexibility.
Offering a slightly lower price
to casinos for a certain seafood item can alleviate a temporary
overstock. The casinos can offer the fish at a private gathering or as
a buffet item.
Dulcich said as long as people
keep coming to
Las Vegas
for seafood, distributors such as Pacific Seafood will help make sure
the desert is swimming in fish.
Mark Hansel
covers retail and marketing for In Business Las Vegas and its sister
publication, the
Las Vegas
Sun. He can be reached at 259-4069 or at hansel@lasvegassun.com.
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