Supermarket Perimeter - March 2020 - 57

Choices galore (or just make our own)

Four years of
explosive growth
- and still going
ACCORDING to September 2019
Datassential research, poke is the
top trending seafood dish in the
U.S., with 17% growth over the last
year and 187% growth over the last
four years.
MEGAN RIDER, domestic
marketing director for the Juneaubased Alaska Seafood Marketing
Institute, doesn't think that trend
will change anytime soon.
"WE expect to see demand spike
even higher this year, with the 2020
Summer Olympics set for Tokyo
and Japanese inﬂuence expected to
permeate further into the American
culinary landscape," she says.
FIRST, as Rider points out, poke
restaurants exploded across the
U.S. Now, as so often happens, the
trend is migrating to other channels
- namely, grocery perimeter
departments.
"IN addition to gourmet and
natural supermarkets leading the
way with self-serve poke bars,
the trend is moving out of the
seafood department and into the
mainstream deli, with retailers
increasingly offering prepared poke
among other fresh-prepared items,"
she says.
HISSHO poke bowls sold at
grocery retail are hand-crafted
daily by local chefs with highquality, responsibly-sourced
ingredients, Wilde says. Poke, he
adds, has everything the company's
customers already love about their
sushi, but now they're thinking
"outside the roll" and having
it crafted into a satisfying and
convenient bowl they can take on
the go.

Hissho currently offers ﬁve different poke bowls, which vary depending on the location. The company's signature bowls include Classic Hawaiian Poke, Mango Salmon
Poke and Blake Dragon Poke. Grocery shoppers can order a signature bowl or build
their own right there in the deli section.
In 2019, Hissho introduced two new bowls: Aloha Poke and Salmon Lover Poke.
Aloha pairs tuna, fresh ginger, edamame, blueberries, red onion and red radish
on a bed of sushi rice and lettuce. The unique combination delivers "fresh, powerful
ﬂavors," Wilde says.
Salmon Lover Poke Bowl boasts not only great ﬂavor but eye-popping color, he
adds. Hissho paired fresh citrus with cherry tomatoes and mangoes. Toppings like
seaweed salad, sliced almonds and fried onions complete the savory, sweet bowl.
As far as trends in poke go, Hissho is seeing more and more consumers ﬁlling their
bowls with bold fruits, spices, umami sauces and crunchy textures, Wilde says.

Poke gone wild
Gen Z shoppers in particular, a key audience for
poke, are more attuned to
knowing where their food
comes from, making wild,
sustainable seafood from
Alaska the top choice for
younger generations of
poke shoppers.
There's also, she adds, a
prime opportunity for the
evolution of poke bowls,
featuring seafood along
with grains and produce,
from restaurants into the
service deli.
"As a majority of
Americans intend to eat
less meat in the year
ahead, seafood and plantbased staples like grains
can work together to ﬁll
nutrient gaps and satisfy
shoppers," she says.
Asian ﬂavors have also
been trending over the
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past couple of years, with
additional culinary inﬂuence in the U.S. expected
this year as a result of
the Summer 2020 Tokyo
Olympics, Rider says.
"With the combined
upward trajectory of poke
bowls and the growing
trend toward Asian ﬂavors,
our Tropical Poke Bowl,
made with soy sauce, sesame oil and rice vinegar,
remains one of the more
popular recipes on our
site," she says. "Retailers
interested in poke can
access this recipe and others on the Alaska Seafood
website, for sharing digitally or for re-creation as
an in-store offering."
Also on its site, ASMI
has a ﬂavor and ingredient
guide retailers can use and/
or share to create customized poke bowls starting

with wild Alaska salmon or
wild Alaska surimi.
Shoppers often value
freshness when it comes
to seafood, not realizing
that most of the seafood
in supermarkets and
restaurants has been frozen at some point, which
is important for ensuring
quality and food safety,
Rider says.
Alaska's frozen-fresh
practices, she says, in
which ﬁshermen often
freeze their wild catch
directly on the boat, locks
in freshness and maintains
quality.
"For home poke preparation from frozen, consumers can simply defrost
ﬁsh in a covered, perforated pan overnight in the
fridge before marinating
for roughly 30 minutes
before serving."
MARCH 2020 - 57

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Supermarket Perimeter - March 2020

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