Our Producers
TwoxSea Works Against the Tide to Get the Freshest Catches to Your Table
Our seafood wholesaler overhauled an industry by putting freshness, transparency, and sustainability first.
Welcome to Scratchpad, an ever-growing glossary of I-don’t-have-time-for-this-interview interviews with the badass producers, teammates, and customers that make up the Good Eggs community.
Today: The time that it takes for fresh fish to get from the sea to our foodhub is less than 12 hours — it’s how we get the freshest fish to our customers and a feat that we’re pretty proud of, but one that wouldn’t be possible without the groundwork laid by Kenny Belov and TwoXSea — a sustainable seafood wholesaler that continues to rewrite the rules on what it means to catch, source, and sell fish sustainably. We spent a morning with the team on the docks to see the story behind the operation first-hand.
A Need for the Whole(sale) Story
In 2004, Kenny Belov opened Fish Restaurant— a casual joint on the waters of Sausalito, CA serving fresh local catches to sun-soaked patrons. Frustrated by the lack of honesty and transparency in the sourcing and sale of fish in the Bay Area, he opened Fish to feature the Northern California’s best sustainably-caught fresh seafood — and tell the story behind every piece sold.
It wasn’t long before he realized this was a feat harder to accomplish than he originally imagined. His team trekked from one wholesale market to the next to source sustainably-caught seafood, but were so often stumped after asking the most basic questions: Who caught the fish? Where was it caught? What gear was used on the vessel? Wholesalers in San Francisco simply did not have the answers — from Kenny’s perspective, “the sourcing story didn’t matter.”
So in 2009, after four and a half years of hearing “I don’t know” from wholesalers, Kenny took matters into his own hands: “The only way to change wholesale was to become wholesale.” Fish was the first client of what would become TwoXSea, a sustainable wholesaler that bought directly from fishing vessels to sell to a like-minded community who, as Kenny did, always asked why.
100% Supply Chain Transparency
By overseeing each part of the supply chain, TwoXSea ensures total transparency and maintains incredibly high standards for sourcing and labor practices. That means staying away from industrial practices that promote overfishing and waste, and instead championing small fishers. Even better, Kenny can share the whole story behind every fish he sells: “We tell a lot of stories about our ranchers and our chicken producers and our cheesemakers and our wine producers and our farmers, and they all deserve every last drop of that glory, but it’s very rare that we talk about our fishers.”
“We tell a lot of stories about our ranchers and our chicken producers and our cheesemakers and our wine producers and our farmers, but it’s very rare that we talk about our fishers.”
We’re able to highlight these stories in a big way at Good Eggs, thanks to the groundwork laid by TwoXSea. One glance at the label on your fish we bring to your doorstep from wholesalers like TwoxSea, and you’ll know who caught it, where it was caught, how it was caught, and just for fun, the name of the fishing boat or captain. As for when? Caught last night, or even this morning.
Rethinking Farmed Fish
In some cases, demand forces supply. To provide sustainable trout year-round for buyers, TwoXSea toyed with the idea of fish farming — an industry traditionally known for intense antibiotic and hormone use, polluted water, land degradation, and overall mediocre product. They knew they’d have to work from the ground up to provide a responsibly-farmed fresh trout that was also delicous, fatty, and clean. “It was just another thing that wasn’t done by the industry,” Kenny says, “because either the industry didn’t want to do it or thought it couldn’t be done, and we just set out and we achieved it.”
Enter, McFarland Springs Trout Farm. Kenny and the TwoxSea team started the farm in Susanville, CA to make use of a flowing stream with fresh water from the Sierras to raise the fish and generate electricity used on the farm. And the feed? The trout are raised on a 100% vegetarian diet — no fish byproduct, no hormones, no antibiotics. Algae added to the feed yields a tender, flaky texture and delicate taste, as well as an overall more nutritious fish without harmful input — better practices, better trout. There’s a reason this trout is one of the most popular goods we sell on our site, and the only farmed fish we carry.
That’s what TwoXSea is all about: providing the best product using the best practices possible, all with transparency in mind, even if that means inventing a new fish food, buying a fish farm, or starting a whole new company. With other producers like Same Day Seafood, One Ocean, and Siren Fish Co. building on their momentum, TwoxSea has sparked a movement to reinvent how we think about seafood and the stories of the fishers and places behind it, for good.
Shop fresh, local fish from TwoXSea for delivery to your door on goodeggs.com.
