We've been a fishing family for generations, nets and lines before websites and delivery vans. One side of the family works the water, following the season up and down the coast. The other side runs the business, takes the orders, and makes sure what's landed actually reaches your door while it's still worth eating.
That's the easy bit to say and the hard bit to build a business on, because the sea doesn't run on a schedule. Some days there's a full catch worth shouting about. Some days there's nothing worth selling at all. So when the boat's quiet, we don't leave the counter empty: two decades of buying at the UK's best markets means we know exactly who to call and what's worth bringing home. Same standard, different route to your door.
Two ways in, one rule that doesn't bend: if we wouldn't eat it ourselves, we don't sell it.
That's Essex Fresh Catch. Not a warehouse, not a wholesaler with a nice website, a family who knows the water, and a fair bit of stubbornness about what “fresh” is actually supposed to mean.
Our own boat works out of Leigh, King's Lynn, Grimsby and Southwold, so most of what we sell we landed ourselves.
When we top up, it's from day-boat markets we know by name, Brixham among them, bought with the same eye a top restaurant buyer uses, not off a wholesale sheet.
Nothing is bulked out with frozen stock. If it is not fresh that day, it does not go on the list.
