Family finds national success in salmon and cheese

Published 11:48 am Monday, November 24, 2008

A Stanwood business is finding its niche in a savory treat available in the wineries of Leavenworth and in grocery stores across Washington State.

The Black family’s unique combination of Alaskan smoked salmon and white cheddar cheese won second place in the smoked cheeses category of this summer’s 25th annual American Cheese Society Conference and Competition event in Chicago.

Their exposure has taken off since receiving the national honor and if everything goes as planned, Captain Black’s Seafood, LLC will soon expand its customer base to include markets in Oregon and California.

“We didn’t realize how many people were really into cheese,” said Wendel Black, the company’s president.

His father, Leo Black, came up with the idea of offering cheddar with salmon mixed in four years ago. Wendel and his family took his father’s idea to Cedar Grove Cheese, Inc. in Wisconsin, the company that entered the cheese in the Chicago contest to develop their product. They were given 120 pounds of the new cheese combination to hand out to friends and family. The blend received rave reviews, said Wendel, and by July of last year they had finished setting up their new business.

Although some money was borrowed to help pay for startup costs, most of the original funding came from wages Wendel earned as a factory supervisor for the Glacier Fish Company in Alaska. He worked for 22 years on a 200-foot trawler catching and processing Alaskan Pollack in the Bering Sea. It was where he met Kym Ward, who is now Wendel’s wife and in charge of marketing the family business.

“Back in Alaska, we used to be out at sea as long as three months until we filled up the boat,” said Wendel. “Now it takes about two weeks to process about 200 tons of fish a day working 16 hour shifts. We did that for years, probably spending six months out of a year at sea.”

That helped fuel their motivation for getting out of the fishing business and trying a new way of life, she said, from processing fish to selling cheese.

Captain Black’s Seafood offers three varieties of their gourmet specialty cheese, including plain, dill or chive. The cheese is handcrafted, using all-natural non-GMO ingredients including milk from cows that have received no artificial growth hormones.

“The product itself is unique,” said Kym, “We’re the online company offering a combination of salmon and cheese like this. No one has tried to copy it.”

All-natural preservative-free salmon is shipped in from Alaska to Sonny Foods in Bellingham where it is filleted, cured and then smoked using alderwood and hard fruitwoods. From there, the Blacks take it to their plant on Camano Island to trim and cut the fish into small pieces before repackaging it for shipping to Wisconsin for final processing.

The cheese returns in 8-ounce vacuum-sealed packages and is aged for six weeks before it is shipped back out to be distributed and sold.

Although the cheese has an expected shelf life of six months, Wendel said that like most cheeses, their product can remain suitable for eating much longer, and the family is considering whether to offer customers cheese that has been aged up to a year.

“Our cheese is considered a mild cheddar, it’s not sharp,” he said. “If we age the cheese a year, it’s still good with the salmon in there. We may offer that online, we’re kind of throwing that around right now. We don’t have a store online yet. We’re basically trying to keep up with our current customers.”

Samples were given to Haggen Food &Pharmacy, which agreed to sell their products in 10 locations, including Arlington and Stanwood. Once word got out, Peterson Distributing requested samples for themselves, and put the Stanwood family’s cheese in 75 QFC stores statewide and in the Portland, Oregon area.

Last month, the Blacks’ offerings were showcased at The Seattle Food &Wine Experience event at Quest Field, an event benefiting the region’s homeless population.

“There were three other cheese sellers invited besides ourselves,” said Wendel. “The event paid for the booth and everything. And the exposure you get is great. We figured there were about 8,000 people who went through there over the two-day event.”

These days, Wendel’s father can often be found at the local market offering samples to a growing number of people who fancy their artisan cheeses.

“Leo is the king salesman,” said Kym. “He can do a demo and sell out everything they have in the store. I don’t know how he does it.”

Captain Black’s Seafood is currently producing an estimated 2,000 pounds of cheese per month. The business has ordered a total of 14,500 pounds of cheese since last December, when they made their first major delivery to Haggen. The challenge, said Wendel, has been the need to accurately anticipate how much product is needed at any given time to keep up with customer demand. With the troubled economy, Wendel said this task has become even more difficult.

“It’s a luxury item, it’s not a food staple, and right now people are having a hard time,” he said. “It’s pretty amazing after this first year we’re still going and still acquiring new customers.”

To keep up with the financial challenges of its customers, the family has been selling smaller 5-ounce portions of their cheese in 10 Haggen and Top Foods stores since October.

“They figured it would sell a little easier on people’s pocketbooks,” said Wendel.

DPI Specialty Foods wants to distribute their nationally-recognized cheeses across Oregon and Washington in all Haggen and Top Foods locations.

“Our business goal right now is to go into the market in California next year, said Wendel. “Someday, maybe we’ll go national. We’ll just take it one day at a time and see where it goes.”

“The way I see it, even in this economy it’s still possible to come up with an idea and go for it,” he said. “Between me and my wife and my dad, we said ‘hey, let’s do it, let’s start a business and see what happens’. It can be done.”

For more information, visit www.captainblackseafood.com.