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Fresh fish comes to Nashua
Harbor Trading is a market within a market
By Linda A. Odum food@hippopress.com
Sky Market’s owner, Joseph Yi-Pellegrino, and Harbor Trading’s Scott Moody were on the same wavelength. Both knew Nashua lacked a fresh fish market, and both wanted to find a way to fill that need. Fate intervened one day when Moody walked into Sky Market.
“I had been looking for over a year to have fish and meat added to the store,” Yi-Pellegrino said. “There are a lot of meat markets around, but no fish markets.”
“I was going to rent a space down the way,” Moody said. “I came in [to Sky Market] to introduce myself to Joe. We talked, and partnering with him was an easy decision.”
Moody subleased space just inside the front door of the market for Harbor Trading. His father, Bruce, who has years of experience in the retail fish business on the Maine seacoast, goes to the Boston Fish Market early Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday mornings to pick up the freshest seafood available. The staples lined up in the glass showcases include haddock, salmon, swordfish, tuna, sea bass, dry scallops, shrimp and live lobster. A special catch of the day might be black cod, sole, mahi mahi, tilapia or halibut. (As business picks up, the elder Moody will make daily trips to Boston.)
There is more than just seafood sold in Moody’s area of the market. He sells specialty meats such as North East Family Farms pork chops and ground beef, Niman Ranch all-natural bacon, Bell and Evans all-natural chicken, Azuluna all-natural lamb kabobs, and local buffalo burgers.
“The initial idea was for a fish market, but after talking to Joe, he suggested I rethink the idea,” Moody said. “I went with it by choosing local and organic meats. I have all types of customers, and there is a group who are looking for all-natural and local-grown items.”
A business of his own was Moody’s dream while he worked for 18 years in the high-tech industry. He also saw it as an opportunity to spend more time with his wife, Lara, and their two young sons: “I spent a lot of time on the road for work, so it appeals to me to be home more often. So I decided to give business ownership a shot.”
In fact, Lara is involved as well. A stay-at-home mom, she wanted to return to the workplace now that both boys are in school. She joined the Harbor Trading team and set up the area that features ingredients, recipes and utensils compatible with the seafood.
“Now we can say to someone who is not crazy about cooking, ‘Here’s the recipe. Here’s the marinade. Here’s the pot to cook it in,’” Moody said.
Moody will take special orders for both seafood and meats. So far he has obtained items such as blue crab, wild Alaskan salmon, veal, lamb and roasts. His suppliers can get the items to him within 48 hours.
Moody sees Harbor Trading’s mission as two-fold: “We offer high-quality products and we educate people,” he said.
As an example, Moody pointed to farm-raised fish: “People don’t really understand what that is. They think it comes from the ocean. They don’t realize the fish are contained in a confined area and fed a certain diet that the farmer wants them to eat, not what they can get for themselves. And it’s not much of a trick to catching them either.”
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