Take Me Out to the Ballgame!

It’s summer, which means warm weather, grilling out and America’s favorite pastime: Baseball. Come on, you can almost smell the peanuts and the cracker jacks, can’t you?

America has no shortage of sporting options for rabid sports fans from coast to coast, but there’s something particularly special and nostalgic and—dare I say—patriotic about baseball. It’s American, through and through. Almost as American as the hot dog and apple pie.

Hot dogs, peanuts and yes those good ‘ol Cracker Jacks are standard-issue baseball fare. But over the years, we’ve seen baseball stadiums start to compete for the best food—introducing regional dishes and special additions in concessions stands and marketplaces. These new offerings sometimes feature a celebrity chef-inspired menu item or recipe, a partnership with a major brand like “Franks Red Hot” or are inspired by a tried-and-true dish or a local fan-favorite.

It's a big deal to have a menu item at a major MLB stadium—not only for the sheer number of fans and visibility, but also because breaking in a new food is innovative, is disruptive and puts a new twist on what was once classic American baseball fare.

Enter: Wild Alaska Pollock. Starting June 28th, through a new partnership between the Association of Genuine Alaska Pollock Producers (GAPP) and the Seattle Mariners, Wild Alaska Pollock will be hitting the menu at a Mariner’s ballpark hot-spot: Edgar’s Cantina in a new Wild Alaska Pollock fish taco menu item, and in various other locations and clubs throughout the arena.

This is an exciting new partnership, made possible in part thanks to a substantial Saltonstall-Kennedy Grant GAPP received last year from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). This grant, which centered around the sizeable opportunity to introduce more consumers nationwide to Wild Alaska Pollock by showcasing it in sporting arenas and event locations across the country has already been wildly successful. The bedrocks of the program have been GAPP’s existing and on-going partnership with Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena and its newly formed partnership with New York’s UBS Arena this past season. GAPP has also worked with the Seattle DubSea Fish Sticks team as well as several other limited offerings at other sporting events.

But tapping into the baseball fan base is new and exciting—and a brand new opportunity to continue to introduce consumers and sports fans alike to a fish called Wild Alaska Pollock, and its substantial attributes. And, it doesn’t hurt that the Mariners are on one heck of a hot streak right now either! Wink.

We’ll be working with the Mariners and their foodservice purveyor, Sodexo, to determine how best to showcase Wild Alaska Pollock throughout the arena and how to introduce consumers to this new fish—through in-stadium advertisements and social media. A large part of our grant is measuring consumers recall of Wild Alaska Pollock and its attributes, so we’ll be working to survey fans throughout the remainder of the season, too, to see how we’re doing.

So—if you’re a Seattle local, be sure to stop by Edgar’s Cantina for some fabulous new Wild Alaska Pollock after June 28th. And if you’re not local to the PNW, follow along here on my blog for updates about how this latest launch in a sports venue is going for our favorite fish: Wild Alaska Pollock.

As they say here in Seattle: Trident’s up, go Mariners and here’s to #TeamWildAlaskaPollock!