In case you’re like many people, you don’t assume a lot about the place your seafood comes from or why it issues—however Arron Kallenberg is operating to modify that. The Alaska local left a successful career in tech to start out Wild Alaskan Company (WAC), a sustainable seafood subscription provider, no longer as a result of he was once assured it might prevail, however as a result of he believed deeply in its project.
“I didn’t need to depart a secure, safe activity, personal fairness, undertaking capital—I used to be newly married—and cross promote frozen fish on the net. It felt like one thing I needed to do as a result of I noticed the disconnection that humanity was once experiencing between herbal meals methods and society at huge,” Kallenberg says.
When the corporate introduced in 2017, he and his spouse, Monica Haim, had been suffering with infertility, and he couldn’t lend a hand considering that if kids weren’t within the playing cards, he wanted otherwise to increase his legacy. Despite the fact that he had no concept whether or not the startup would take off, “it felt too necessary no longer to take a look at,” he remembers.
Because the son and grandson of industrial fishermen, Kallenberg was once forced to uphold his circle of relatives’s deep-rooted values of connecting with their meals supply and with their neighborhood over shared foods. “My dad grew up fishing with my grandfather, and I grew up fishing with my dad,” says Kallenberg, who now has two kids along with his spouse.
In a tradition the place large-scale, commercial meals manufacturing has in large part crowded out meals methods that paintings in tandem with nature, “the conversations we’ve been having for 4 generations… have all been round how can we pay admire, specific reverence for and take part on this herbal meals gadget?” For Kallenberg, WAC was once the herbal resolution to all of the ones questions.
A Damaged Device
Over the years, Kallenberg changed into more and more disturbed by means of the state of the seafood trade. Within the Nineteen Nineties, he noticed his circle of relatives and neighborhood combat because of a salmon value cave in, which he credit in large part to the upward push of commercial salmon feedlots. As fish flooded the marketplace, costs plummeted.
In the meantime, world mining companies had been making use of for rights to mine the Bristol Bay watershed, posing a big risk to the sector’s greatest sockeye fishery. Early on, Kallenberg joined the motion to offer protection to the fish and maintain the native economies and Local tribes who rely on them.
Kallenberg reached a snapping point when he discovered how little the general public knew about their fish. Maximum “wild-caught” salmon appeared “not anything like” the salmon he grew up with, he says. “It’s essential name that fish fraud or simply undeniable lack of information,” he says.
Exponential Enlargement
No matter you name it, Kallenberg knew he needed to be a part of the answer. Fueled by means of the need to mend a damaged gadget and to attach folks with their meals and to one another, WAC has grown exponentially since they bought their first field of fish in 2018. On the time, their workforce integrated simply 4 folks, together with Kallenberg, Haim and two founding contributors.
As of late, WAC comprises just about 150 workers in 23 states throughout quite a lot of departments, together with member revel in, finance, operations and advertising and marketing, to call a couple of. In beneath seven years, they’ve delivered sustainably sourced seafood to roughly 450,000 families throughout america.
And in 2023, they got House Ports Seafoods processing, a multigenerational circle of relatives trade they’d evolved a detailed dating with from day one. “They processed our first batch of fish for us,” Kallenberg remembers. With House Ports working as a part of their workforce, WAC is now poised to raised meet buyer call for and enlarge choices.
Figuring out your corporate’s values and project is something, however placing them into motion is any other. Listed below are many ways WAC’s practices align with their core values and dedication to sustainability.
A Awesome Provide Chain
“I really like to mention that Wild Alaskan is a tech-enabled, data-driven advertising and marketing and frozen logistics corporate that occurs to promote fish,” Kallenberg says. As WAC has grown to incorporate a virtual product and engineering workforce, an information science workforce and plenty of extra “in reality, in reality good folks,” they’ve leveraged device answers to optimize potency and decrease their carbon footprint to effectively ship seafood containers to doorsteps in all 50 states.
Inexperienced Packaging
Each and every WAC cargo is packed in Inexperienced Cellular Foam, an eco-friendly choice to standard insulation. Made out of non-GMO, U.S.-sourced cornstarch, it’s secure to burn in a hearth, compost or dissolve and pour down the drain. “It might be in truth inexpensive to make use of a much less environmentally pleasant insulation,” however WAC gained’t skimp on placing their values into motion, Kallenberg says.
Shared Stories
The corporate targets to lend a hand folks reconnect with their meals and their communities—and Kallenberg’s main by means of instance. For his or her workforce assembly, each and every workforce member was once invited to a weeklong retreat in rural Alaska, the place they’d the danger to take part in a bonfire, a salmon bake at the seaside, a fishing tour and extra. “I in reality do outline good fortune as a contented heartbeat with no matter time we’ve got in the world, and for me, that’s developing shared studies,” he says.
Dedication to the Better Excellent
As a public get advantages company, moderately than just aiming to maximise shareholder price, WAC is dedicated to benefitting the general public and working responsibly and sustainably. In so doing, Kallenberg hopes to “encourage different meals methods, out of doors of untamed fisheries, to undertake an identical requirements.”
Embracing Custom and Innovation
“The tech trade has this hustle tradition of ‘transfer rapid and damage issues,’” Kallenberg says. In different phrases, experiment, take dangers and turn gears for those who fail. On the other hand, in industrial fishing, an inherently dangerous trade, that means can value lives.
WAC targets to fuse the most efficient of each worlds, Kallenberg says. “In the long run, I characteristic our expansion to staying true to the project, remembering the legacy and looking to honor it, and taking numerous the great that generation can deliver, from the provision chain and verbal exchange perspective, and meshing them in combination to [build a company] this is placing this glorious seafood from The usa’s yard on plates around the nation.”
This text initially gave the impression within the March/April 2025 issue of SUCCESS magazine. Picture from Wild Alaskan Corporate.
