Coastline Market Inc. is a Vancouver startup which has an app that helps fishermen by linking them up with restaurants and in the process preventing middle men from pocketing big bucks.
The company, which was founded by two millennial students who said they share a mutual love of entrepreneurship, offers a way for fishermen to keep a bigger share of the profit from the produce and have control over their income.
Coastline Market’s CEO Robert Kirstiuk, first thought of the idea for an app that would help commercial fishermen when he was buying fish at a dock while visiting family in Pointe-Verte, a coastal town in New Brunswick.
Further, Kirstiuk and co founder Joseph Lee spent around eight months getting to know the fish business better by attending seafood shows, talking to executives of seafood companies and meeting fishermen at the docks.
The app then attracted fishermen and restaurants would put out orders for seafood on the app. Fisherman would check the orders on the app and fulfill them if they could. Delivery was taken care by a truck from Coastline Market which took the seafood straight to the restaurant from the dock thus eliminating any need for storage faculties processing units.
Fisherman earn more when they sell their seafood on the app since they are paid anywhere from around 50 percent more to 200 percent more than they would usually make from wholesale dealers. Restaurants benefit too as they pay lesser than they would to a fish wholesale dealer. The company, Coastline Market, makes around 20 percent of the transaction price per deal.
Coastline aims to build a mobile app in addition to its desktop app that is now being used by fishermen thus making it more widely available and easier to access. While many industries are now moving online, it was only time before electronic sales came into the world of fish wholesaling too. However, the market for seafood is not entirely easy to make available online and could take some time before it is establishes itself as a norm.
The company can also tap the potential of other coastal cities in Canada to link fishermen up with restaurants and thus make it a viable option for both. Buying seafood from the app has various advantages over the traditional wholesale market. Chefs and restaurateurs can find out where the fish was caught, what method was used to catch it and information about the fisherman who caught it. This type of information can be important to a chef who aims to buy local and know more about the product they are using.
The seafood market in Vancouver has been estimated to have a potential of around $100 million, it is now time to see if Coastline Market can capture a portion of this huge market in the months to come.
