Why Buying Seafood Online Beats the Grocery Store Seafood

1. Cutting Out the "Middleman Lag"

In the traditional grocery model, seafood follows a multi-step path that creates a massive "freshness gap." When you do the math, the numbers are eye-opening.

The Traditional Grocery Store Timeline:

• The Catch: A boat stays out to fish (2–5 Days).
• The Auction: Fish lands and waits to be sold (+1 Day).
• Logistics: A buyer/wholesaler purchases the catch, receives the fish. Now… this is where the fish either gets delivered straight to the market (if it is local to the company), or it gets handed to a transportation company (+1 to 2 Days).
• Warehousing: The product reaches the customer OR a regional distribution center for inventory and sorting (+1 Day).
• Retail Prep: Finally, it arrives at the grocery store to be received and put on display (+1 to 2 Days).

The Total Math: By the time you see that fish in a grocery store case, it is already 6 to 11 days old.

Every stop involves a new middleman, a different truck, and—most importantly—extra days of aging. Because Intershell is located at the primary hub for seafood landings, if you buy from us directly online and we ship it to you, we eliminate those middlemen. We are at the source.

The "Freshness Gap" Table: Grocery Store vs. Intershell

2. Double The Shelf Life

By the time you see that fish in a grocery store case, it has already used up nearly two-thirds of its high-quality shelf life. Every extra day spent in a truck or a distribution center is a day taken away from your refrigerator.

• Buying Seafood from a Grocery Store: You are buying a product at the end of its journey. You typically have a 1–2 day window of peak freshness before it begins to turn.
• Buying Seafood from Intershell: Because we ship the same day your order is prepared, you receive your seafood with its natural integrity intact. This allows for a 3–6 day shelf life (depending on the species) once it reaches your door.

Even after the 1-day transit time to anywhere in the country—or even internationally—our seafood arrives with more "life" left in it than the fish that has been sitting in a grocery display case all weekend.

3. Better Pricing for Premium Quality

There is a common myth that buying direct is "luxury pricing." In reality, grocery stores have to bake transportation costs, cross-dock fees, and massive retail overhead into their prices.

Because we handle the sourcing and processing ourselves in Gloucester, our pricing is highly competitive with high-end grocery chains. You aren’t paying for a massive corporate footprint; you’re paying for the fish.

4. Sustainability & Traceability

At a large grocery chain, there is a massive disconnect between the buyer and the consumer. The corporate purchaser sitting in an office hundreds of miles away isn't the person handing you your fish. If you ask the person behind the counter where a fillet came from, you might get an answer—but can you trust it’s the right one? It’s not the groceries store's fault, it is just the simple reality.

Grocery stores when purchasing are often focused on "bottom dollar" pricing to protect their margins. To keep costs low, they frequently source from wherever is cheapest, meaning you might think you're buying domestic seafood when it’s actually an import.

At Intershell, we prioritize transparency over "attractive" low-quality pricing. We can tell you exactly where your seafood is from.

• We can confirm if it is domestic or a high-quality import.
• We can tell you how it was prepared in our facility.
• We can even tell you which boat it came from or how it was caught.

When you buy from us, you aren't just buying "fish"; you’re buying a traceable product.