Do you provide seafood home delivery services in the UK? If yes, you will have to go the extra mile to ensure 100% customer satisfaction. Unlike delivering pre-packaged, ready-made products, online seafood delivery requires a great deal of planning. You cannot simply stuff your bag with items and drop them at your customers’ doorstep.
Fish, crab, lobster, and other perishable seafood can get spoiled, thawed or bruised during the long and cold supply chain. And if your catch reaches your customers’ homes in such shape, it will cost you their trust, which is never a good thing for any business.
Luckily for you, delivering fresh seafood is easier than it sounds. Hint: It has to do with keeping your catch cold. Here are four tips to help you do that:
1. Understand the importance of low temperature.
To make sure your seafood stays fresh when it reaches your customers, you may want to consider the temperature of the environment it will be stored in. Storing your frozen fish at low temperatures (ideally: -20 degrees) ensures that it stays in top condition for a long(er) time. Keeping your seafood at lower temperatures can also be particularly useful if you have to cover long coast-to-coast distances (think coast to coast) to deliver the seafood to the market.
2. Use specialized containers to store your seafood.
You cannot just dump your fresh catch in any ordinary container. If you want to keep your seafood fresh for longer, it is a good idea to invest in containers specially designed to store fresh seafood at a temperature of no more than 0°C degrees but preferably below 5°C.
The specialized container you choose to store your load of seafood will depend mainly on these three questions:
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Are you shipping fresh or frozen fish?
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How will you pack your seafood?
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Will you cut pieces or deliver the fish as a whole?
The answers to these three questions will help you make the right choice for a specialized container for your seafood.
3. Keep your stored seafood away from heat.
Heat is a significant factor to consider while you are shipping your fresh catch. Heat is capable of passing even through the insulation of the vehicle used to carry the seafood, and even a ten-degree increase in the temperature can quickly degrade the quality of your fish. Higher temperatures can also impact and lessen the storage life of frozen seafood. To prevent these issues and ensure your seafood is delivered fresh, keep your stored seafood in a temperature-regulated environment, especially during transition points.
4. Use refrigerants
Refrigerants are not typically required when you are transporting frozen fish. However, if you are shipping fresh fish over a long distance, a refrigerant such as dry ice, wet ice, or gel ice is a must to keep your catch fresh when it reaches its destination.
Well, there you have it: four simple tips for fresh seafood delivery. If you know of any more tips and secrets, let us know in the comments below.