How much does a Week’s share of Fishadelphia fish actually cost?
In our Spring 2021 season, each Seafood Club share cost Fishadelphia $23.59 per week. About 40% of that was the cost of the fish and cutting, 55% was student and adult staff labor, including delivery, packing, coordinating orders and distribution, and corresponding with customers, and 5% was ice and supplies. (Note that our youth programming is separately grant-funded.)
Our mission as an organization is multi-fold. We of course want to provide you fresh, high-quality seafood at reasonable prices. We also only sell fish that have been harvested and processed locally, and in particular aim to support small, family-owned harvesters, processors, and distributors. We pay at- or higher-than market prices to our harvesters (link to come) and we aim to pay everyone on our team good wages, including our teen staff members who are students at Philly schools. We sell community-rate shares close to at-cost, and it's important for us to have this tier, so people who wouldn't otherwise be able to afford fresh, local fish are able to afford ours. Lastly, we run student programming each week and community programming & engagement each season.
Your subscription dollars go toward sustaining or supporting all of this. So you are investing not just in higher-quality & fresher fish than you can get at any grocery store, but also in your local eating and fishing communities! Our hope is being part of Fishadelphia makes you feel part of a larger ecosystem of relationships — that along the way you are able to learn more about the local fishing landscape and feel connected to more neighbors.
A note on buying local: buying only from NJ harvesters means that we are limited to local conditions and what fisherpeople are catching on pickup weeks in large enough quantities for all of our customers. We roll with the punches, and share our decision-making process with you. The price we pay for fish varies week to week, with some weeks being more expensive than others, but we try to make sure it evens out over a season!