Canned seafood brand Safe Catch’s expansion into frozen seafood underscores the growing reality for packaged food brands that consumers are following trusted standards across the store, not just in familiar formats.
Expanding beyond cans and pouches
The shift into frozen is less about entering a new category for its own sake and more about extending Safe Catch’s core principles into new usage occasions, according to Kevin McCay, Safe Catch’s chief operating officer.
From the outset, the company defined itself not by product format, but by a standard rooted in quality, convenience and transparency. That focus is now guiding its expansion into frozen with its mercury-tested wild-caught pollock nuggets and tuna burgers – formats that align with broader food trends around nutrition, convenience and ingredient quality.
The company identified frozen seafood as an area where consumers frequently make tradeoffs on quality for convenience, creating an opportunity to differentiate.
“It gave us a clear opportunity to show up differently, but for everybody,” said McCay.
The move into frozen also reflects changing consumer habits. Frozen fits naturally into daily life, offering flexibility and familiarity through formats like nuggets and burgers, allowing Safe Catch to be a part of consumers’ daily meal routines, McCay added.
Scaling a core quality standard
At the center of Safe Catch’s expansion is its proprietary mercury testing technology, which has defined the brand since its founding in 2013.
The company uses its own metal testing machine, which can analyze tissue samples “the size of a grain of rice” and identify mercury concentration down to parts per billion – 10 times below the FDA standard, according to the company.
Safe Catch extends its testing to every fish across its frozen portfolio, embedding transparency directly into how the business operates. As McCay points out, transparency is about how a business is built, not just what it claims.
Initially, innovation at Safe Catch was centered on solving the problem of mercury testing at scale. Now that this process is fully integrated into the company’s operations, it provides a platform for broader product development.
“It’s not about creating something new for the sake of it,” McCay said. “It’s about bringing better options into parts of the store where consumers are already shopping.”
Balancing scale and quality control
Moving into frozen, however, introduces a new layer of operational challenges. Unlike shelf-stable products that are pre-cooked and ready to eat, frozen items require careful coordination across the supply chain, particularly around temperature management and maintaining product integrity, McCay said.
There is “very little margin for inconsistency,” and the company’s strict quality standards further limit sourcing and ingredient options, he added.
“Balancing those two things, scale and control, is one of the biggest challenges behind the scenes,” McCay said.
“On top of that, we’ve had to address how to prepare the new products. With our shelf stable products, the food is already cooked and ready to eat, but with our frozen products we have to take safety, in cooking to safe standards, in mind with preferences, which span a vast range.”
These complexities extend beyond production to sustainability considerations within the frozen category.
“Frozen adds new layers, especially around packaging and distribution, so it pushes us to think more broadly about impact across the full product lifecycle,” McCay said.
Meeting consumers at the intersection of trust and convenience
With mercury testing as the company’s foundation, Safe Catch’s expansion into frozen is guided by how consumers are using its products. Frozen formats play a key role in that shift, aligning with the increasing demand for convenient, nutritious options that fit into busy lifestyles, according to McCay.
At the same time, trust remains a critical metric for success. The brand’s emphasis on testing, sourcing and transparency is intended to drive repeat behavior, not just trial.
“It comes down to how people are actually using the products,” McCay said. “If we’re seeing seafood become a more regular part of how people eat, not just something occasional, that’s a meaningful shift. The other piece is trust. Are people coming back because they feel confident in what they’re buying, not just because they tried it once? That combination, repeat behavior and trust, is what tells us we’re moving in the right direction.”
