Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Sasha Skon. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Sasha thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Almost every entrepreneur we know has considered donating a portion of their sales to an organization or cause – how did you make the decision of whether to donate? We’d love to hear the backstory if you’re open to sharing the details.

We work with Zero Foodprint (https://www.zerofoodprint.org/) because climate work matters. Zero Foodprint is essentially crowdfunding for carbon farming—the more customers spend at restaurants and food retailers, the more funds get directed towards farms to get carbon out of the atmosphere and into the ground. We are committed to offsetting our cabin footprint, and while we try to source as locally as possible, we do occasionally source from farther afoot waters. Striving to be as sustainable as possible, including supporting efforts to counteract emissions is paramount to our business’s core values and mission.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I grew up in a third generation fishmonger’s home in NYC. My stepdad, David Samuels, brought—and still brings—home the day’s best from the market for us to cook and eat as a family before returning to Fulton Fish Market at midnight to work. Add grandmothers on both sides (Israeli, French) who were gifted at feeding their families and I was destined to harbor a love of home cooking and a passion for the freshest seafood. With sustainability as a longtime driving force in my work and life, I wanted to help bring responsible seafood to my area.

I started Sasha’s Seafood for two reasons: to offer access to the best seafood, usually reserved for restaurants, to my community; and to make at-home seafood more fun and approachable.

The most popular thing we sell is salmon by far, but our regulars return each week to try new delights from the sea—Striped Bass from Montauk, Beausoleil Oysters from New Brunswick, Silver Hake from Mass., Dayboat Sea Scallops from Cape May, and whatever else sounds exciting from the day’s catch. Seasonal items like Razor Clams, Soft Shell Crabs and Bay Scallops add a sense of adventure to our menu lineup at different points throughout the year. We also offer some prepared items with the seasons like open faced smoked salmon sandwiches, fish marinades, salmon chowder, tuna tartare, crab cakes and more.

We started Sea Society, a seafood subscription or SeaSA, to reward loyal customers with seasonal bests, value and recipes.

We love talking shop with customers about how the plan to prepare their seafood and sharing tips and recipes for how we enjoy ours at home—the community that’s developed around a love of cooking, eating and seafood is one of the best parts of what we do.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I started Sasha’s Seafood in the fall of 2020, during the pandemic. My work had always been in food, but mostly in events, restaurants and PR. When most of that screeched to a halt, and I was cooking more than ever at home, I started daydreaming about fish and how to make enjoying it—in high quality—at home feel more within reach. By September, I’d been accepted to our local farmers market and by October we were up and running. We were selling out every market as customers returned and word spread about our seafood. I didn’t imagine the side effect of creating community around food, especially at a time when human contact was so scarce, and that was a huge unexpected reward!

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

Because I wanted to focus on ethical, small-scale, high-quality food, starting at a farmers market setting rather than brick and mortar made a lot of sense for Sasha’s Seafood: we go to the fish market once a week, so whatever we have is always as fresh as can be and we are in conversation with our customers getting constant feedback. As a result we are able to stay super nimble, make adjustments as needed and enjoy a very low overhead.

Contact Info:

• Website: Sashasseafood.com
• Instagram: @sashasseafood

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