March 3, 2021 — Gorton’s Seafood is stepping up production and is embarking on a new marketing campaign to cement the significant sales growth it garnered through the COVID-19 pandemic.
Over the past year, Gorton’s retail sales surged 34 percent, with its breaded and battered wild Alaska pollock entrees snaring the highest sales increases, Kurt Hogan, the president and CEO of the Gloucester, Massachusetts, U.S.A.-based processor, told SeafoodSource.
Long-term plan includes possibility of more jobs
March 2, 2018 — Gorton’s is navigating a gale of changing consumer trends and increasing global competition, pushing the venerable Gloucester seafood retailer to continually embrace innovation and change to retain its historic market presence, the company’s president said Thursday.
Judson Reis, speaking at the Cape Ann Chamber of Commerce’s annual economic outlook breakfast, also said the 170-year-old company — one of the nation’s oldest continually operating businesses — is committed to staying in Gloucester.
“It’s part of who we are, it’s part of our DNA,” Reis told breakfasters at The Gloucester House restaurant. “We’ve been here, next year it will be 170 years, so it’s very important part of who we are as a business. We are very committed to staying here.”
The only element that could alter that strategy is if Gorton’s, which operates in what Reis referred to as a “high-cost environment,” lost its ability to operate competitively in the frenzied international frozen seafood retail market.
“And I don’t think that is in the cards any time soon,” Reis said.
Read the full story at the Gloucester Times
November 13, 2017 — GLOUCESTER, Mass. — There’s just something about a guy in a Sou’wester that makes you know that you can trust him when things get a tad sticky. Which is the complete opposite of guys in visors. Them, we keep a eye on.
One of the Gloucester companies that helped make the sou’wester an iconic image of the fishing life is Gorton’s Seafood over at the east end of Rogers Street. And the company has done a very good thing.
Last week, the seafood company announced it is donating 214,000 pounds of its pollock tenders — which breaks down into about 858,000 separate servings (curiously, the exact daily amount called for in the Tom Brady diet) — to food banks in areas ravaged by Hurricane Harvey.
Gorton’s donated the fish to SeaShare, a nonprofit that helps distribute seafood all over the country to folks in need of food assistance through the local organizations which help provide it.
SeaShare set a goal of delivering 2 million servings to the distressed areas damaged by the hurricane and Gorton’s single contribution sure gets the ball rolling in the right direction.
February 2, 2017 — The Gorton’s fisherman, on sabbatical since about 2010, is back and the iconic marketing figure now will be at the center of a social media-centric campaign by the Gloucester-based frozen seafood company.
The new campaign kicked of this week with the release of “Coach,” a video vignette directed by “Saturday Night Live” director Mike Bernstein that projects a humorous side to the slicker-clad Gloucester fisherman while still reinforcing — Gorton’s hopes — the coveted image of ruggedness and serious custodianship of the ocean.
The video spots, according to Gorton’s Vice President of Marketing Chris Hussey, have been tailored for presentation on a variety of different social media platforms and not as traditional television advertising spots.
October 24th, 2016 — Gorton’s Seafood has been around for 167 years, but Gloucester’s most prominent seafood processor now finds itself sailing through a retail climate as volatile and shifting as any the company has experienced, company executives told a touring group of city and state officials on Friday.
The market turbulence, according to the Gorton’s executives, stems from rapidly evolving consumer demands for healthier choices and convenience, as well as from waves of international competition that have laid siege to the U.S. and Canadian retail frozen seafood markets.
“We are in a very, very competitive business,” said Judson Reis, Gorton’s president and chief executive officer for the past seven years. “We have competitors from all over the world who want to get into this market.”
In the past 10 years, Reis said, more than 800 new brands have entered the North American frozen seafood market from around the world — many of them from out along the Pacific Rim.
“They didn’t all stay,” Reis said. “But that gives you an idea of how competitive a business it is.”
The growth within the frozen seafood market, according to Gorton’s Vice President of Marketing Chris Hussey, is being driven financially by the expanding middle class and overall diversification of the consuming public and culturally by an overarching awareness of the health benefits associated with eating seafood.
Reis said Gorton’s, the largest frozen seafood company in the U.S. and the second largest in Canada through its BlueWater Seafoods subsidiary, is meeting the market challenge with a consumer-centric culture and a commitment to innovation that, taken together, help form the “Gorton’s Way.”
Gorton’s response includes new lines of products — marketed as Delicious Classics, Smart Solutions and Everyday Gourmet — that tap into new consumer demands with more healthy choices, more nuanced packaging and an emphasis on simplicity and convenience.
September 19th, 2016 — A 9-degree change in the temperatures inside its trucks of frozen seafood has helped Gorton’s of Gloucester conserve 15,000 gallons of diesel fuel annually.
The change also caught the eye of the Associated Industries of Massachusetts, a statewide employers’ organization and lobbying group, which honored Gorton’s with one of its first Sustainability Awards. The awards recognize companies that manage environmental stewardship, and promote social well-being and economic prosperity across the state.
The award is one of six sustainability honors announced by AIM, with the New England division of Stop & Shop, which operates a store off Gloucester’s Bass Avenue, among the other recipients.
The Gorton’s award comes after the frozen seafood company — a fixture in the Gloucester economy since 1849 and since Slade Gorton’s of Rockport first started packing salt-dried codfish several years later — carried out a study of its transporting systems. The company found that, through equipment and technological improvements, the quality and integrity of its frozen seafood products could be maintained in its refrigerated trucks set for minus-1 degree Fahrenheit instead of the traditional minus-10.
With the change the company has found it is saving diesel fuel at a level equivalent of taking 85 cars off the road or planting 696 trees per year, according to Lisa Webb, the company’s vice president of supply chain.