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For more than two<\/strong> centuries, the Fulton Fish Market<\/strong> has reigned over the East Coast seafood trade, supplying restaurants and local purveyors with aquatic delicacies every morning. The market is primarily for wholesale purchasers (the hours alone dissuade most casual shoppers, who are usually still asleep from 2 a.m. to 7 a.m., when the market runs). But in 2020, the market heeded the insistent call of the internet and launched into ecommerce<\/strong>, making its merchandise readily available to consumers across all 48<\/strong> contiguous states and Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n The cross-country transportation of fresh fish isn\u2019t an endeavor for the faint of heart, but Fulton Fish Market has persisted and now offers upwards of 40<\/strong> SKUs for one- and two-day delivery \u2014 everything from cod and salmon to fresh oysters and Arctic char. To pull it off, the market has employed the help of ColdTrack, an experienced navigator in the choppy waters of cold chain logistics.<\/p>\n The market itself is a co-op with 25-30<\/strong> independent vendors, and its ecommerce arm operates as a separate business entity within that ecosystem, running out of the market\u2019s Hunts Point home base in the Bronx. (Quick side note for those who remember the market in its historic South Street Seaport location \u2014 it moved to the more modern, up-borough facility in 2005.)<\/p>\n When the DTC operation launched, FultonFishMarket.com ran everything<\/strong> itself \u2014 from sourcing at the market through to delivery, often with its own trucks. \u201cThe issue with that is, fulfillment is challenging,\u201d said Mike Tonetti, CEO and COO of FultonFishMarket.com in an interview with Retail TouchPoints<\/em>. \u201cFiguring out all those mechanics on the fulfillment side of the equation took us away from our true expertise<\/strong>, which is finding great seafood and educating customers about what to look for and how to prepare that seafood. [This partnership allows] us to excel at what we are truly experts in, and have ColdTrack excel at what they\u2019re experts in.\u201d<\/p>\n And excel they have. The partnership has not only saved Tonetti\u2019s sanity but also saved the operation a boatload of money \u2014 to the tune of $500,000 in annual shipping costs<\/strong>.<\/p>\n The tale of how they\u2019ve done it includes all the ingredients of a Jules Verne saga \u2014 advanced technology, battles with the elements, travel across immense distances \u2014 and lots and lots of dry ice and gel packs (to be fair, Verne predicted many things, but advances in cold chain logistics weren\u2019t among them). Join us as we follow the journey of a fish from the stalls of the Fulton Market to a customer\u2019s doorstep. \u00a0<\/p>\n Every week, the Fulton Fish Market receives 4 to 5 million<\/strong> pounds of fish from all over the world. FultonFishMarket.com purchases what it needs from that stock to fill the DTC orders, and when required, handles the fabrication \u2014 butchering a full fish into ready-to-cook portions \u2014 then cryogenically freezes those portions for transport. Products that arrive at the market frozen from farther-flung parts of the world, like King Salmon from New Zealand for example, are moved directly to freezers to maintain freshness.<\/p>\n Once Tonetti\u2019s team collects everything it needs from the market to fulfil online orders, the products are moved to ColdTrack facilities in either New Jersey or California, whichever is closer to the end consumer. Items are scanned in at ColdTrack and stored in FEFO order (first expiration, first out), ensuring that items expiring sooner are pulled into orders first.<\/p>\n The early morning bustle of the Fulton Fish Market is a magical experience in its own right, but for FultonFishMarket.com, the real magic begins on packing day, when products are pulled from the freezers and readied for shipment.<\/p>\n Part of the power of the ColdTrack system is the scale and expertise it brings to brands through shared storage facilities and shipping carrier contracts. Each brand that works with ColdTrack has its own \u201cpacking days.\u201d On Fulton Fish packing days, the cloud-based ColdTrack Live system connects to the FultonFishMarket.com shopping cart to pull down orders and assess which of ColdTrack\u2019s regional warehouses across the country are closest to each end consumer. This will determine where the packed boxes will be routed next.<\/p>\n Inventory is assessed to ensure that everything needed to fulfill that day\u2019s orders is on site, and if not, the system will recommend substitutions and alternatives, which can be implemented automatically based on pre-set rules or routed to Fulton Fish for a decision, depending on how they\u2019ve decided they want to handle these kinds of situations.<\/p>\n From there, ColdTrack Live assesses the \u201ccartonization\u201d needs of each order \u2014 what size box is needed and how much cold ice or gel packs will be required, depending on weather conditions on the shipping route and at the end destination. Then all that information is pushed out to the team on the assembly line.<\/p>\n \u201cThe beauty of it is that, once the order hits the floor, our team doesn\u2019t need to do any thinking about things like what size box they need, and they scan every item with finger scanners to make sure every item gets into the box,\u201d explained Warner Siebert, Chief Revenue Officer of ColdTrack in an interview with Retail TouchPoints<\/em>. \u201cThey put in the proper amount of dry ice and pack it according to Mike\u2019s standard operating procedures.\u201d<\/p>\n From there the box gets taped up, labeled and routed to a pallet for the appropriate carrier.<\/p>\n \u201cI remember two or three years ago, before we started working with ColdTrack, I would always go in for the holiday season to help pack and stuff like that,\u201d recalled Tonetti. \u201cWe would have each order in a little bin, and you\u2019d look at that and be like, \u2018Okay, I think this is a medium box or a small box.\u2019 Inevitably, you\u2019d pick a box and you\u2019re in the middle of trying to get everything done before FedEx comes when you realize, \u2018Oh crap. I guessed wrong. I\u2019ve got to redo it,\u201d so you\u2019re running across the facility to get another box. I mean, for us to measure every piece of fish and create our own software that estimates what size box to use would have been some ungodly sum of money, time and focus.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n Customers have no idea that Fulton Fish isn\u2019t handling every aspect of the logistics, because ColdTrack is equipped to handle each brand\u2019s specific packing guidelines. \u201cWe make sure that it\u2019s the brand\u2019s customer experience that we\u2019re delivering, things like tape or stickers put in exactly the same way,\u201d said Guy Ironi, CEO of ColdTrack, in an interview with Retail TouchPoints<\/em>.<\/p>\n Now we come to part of the tale with the treasure, specifically, the $500,000<\/strong> in saved shipping fees.<\/p>\n \u201cShipping seafood can be very costly,\u201d said Tonetti. \u201cIf it\u2019s fresh, it has to go overnight; if it\u2019s frozen, it has to go in two days, and the boxes are heavy because you have dry ice and gel packs. Shipping from the Bronx to California can be $80 or $90<\/strong>, since it has to get onto a plane. We could never charge enough to make money on those sorts of orders, so a big piece of the puzzle for us was getting the fish located closer to the end consumer<\/strong>, so we could ship it via the ground network.\u201d<\/p>\n That is what ColdTrack \u2014 which has five<\/strong> owned warehouses across the country as well a number of other partners it works with \u2014 has brought to equation. Fulton Fish Market could never afford to operate that many regional facilities itself, nor does it have the scale required to get the carrier rates that ColdTrack has, since it handles shipments for a large number of brands.<\/p>\n \u201cWe manage 12 or 14<\/strong> different carrier relationships,\u201d explained Ironi. \u201cWhen you manage it on your own, no matter how much volume you have, it usually becomes a set of golden handcuffs.<\/strong> You give the volume to the carrier, but you can\u2019t easily shift it away, because then you would lose your [pricing] tier. But because we work with dozens of carriers, we can constantly monitor the health of lines and easily shift volume from one carrier to another with no price impact.\u201d<\/p>\n That is also part of what the ColdTrack Live system determines \u2014 which carrier will get each package to the customer in the most cost-effective manner.<\/p>\n Another big piece of saving on shipping is optimizing the way products are packed so that they remain frozen but don\u2019t use any excess materials<\/strong>, which involves \u201cweather optimization, ice logic, coolant logic based on temperature in the areas you\u2019re shipping to, cartonization logic \u2014 other than putting the wrong thing in the box, the biggest challenge is air in the box,\u201d said Ironi. \u201cAir eats up your dry ice, and the carrier will charge you for volume, so we make sure we run through all these volume-planning considerations. If it\u2019s colder than usual, you take five pounds of dry ice off and save five pounds of dry ice and five pounds from shipping.<\/strong> Those are real cost savings.\u201d<\/p>\n Another big area of optimization for Fulton Fish has been labor management. Like most businesses, the market has its busy seasons. The winter holidays are the biggest, followed by January when people tend to be on a wellness kick, as well as other major holidays throughout the year when shoppers are in the mood to celebrate, like Mother\u2019s and Father\u2019s Day.<\/p>\n \u201cWe used to have to triple the size of our team just for a month [to handle peak season]<\/strong>,\u201d said Tonetti. \u201cYou get these people all trained up, and then, come two weeks into January, there\u2019s not a need for them anymore. Managing those fluctuations in demand just wasn\u2019t really feasible for us from a staffing perspective. Partnering with ColdTrack has solved both the fulfillment network, so getting the product closer to customers, and the fulfillment labor to manage those seasonal fluctuations.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n The final piece of the puzzle, the delivery, is also managed by ColdTrack Live, which tracks shipments until they arrive. The Fulton Fish customer service team monitors ColdTrack Live each day for shipping and delivery alerts that are passed on to customers, so that they can get that fresh fish into the fridge (or freezer) as soon as it arrives.<\/p>\n FultonFishMarket.com now offers 100% packing accuracy and coast-to-coast freshness that rivals that of local catch, and things are looking up, particularly because \u201cthere\u2019s a big shift in consumer mindset on frozen<\/strong>,\u201d said Siebert. \u201cI think frozen used to be looked at as something that was cheap, but the way that Mike is taking and processing the fish, it\u2019s technically fresher than fish that\u2019s been sitting out in a display case at Whole Foods that\u2019s probably two or three or four days old. They\u2019re processing it and freezing it at peak freshness.\u201d<\/p>\n And that\u2019s exactly how it arrives at the customer\u2019s door.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n![\"Mike](\"https:\/\/www.retailtouchpoints.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/FF-Mike-1280x720.png\")
Prologue: A Fish Becomes Food<\/strong><\/h2>\n
![\"Fulton](\"https:\/\/www.retailtouchpoints.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/DSC00769-1280x853.jpg\")
Chapter 1: The Fish Enters the ColdTrack<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Chapter 2: Packing Day<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.retailtouchpoints.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Box-on-Line-1280x721.png\")
Chapter 3: The Carrier Fees are Defeated<\/strong><\/h2>\n
![\"Fulton](\"https:\/\/www.retailtouchpoints.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/DSC00829-1280x853.jpg\")
Chapter 4: Taming the Weather (and the Seasons)<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Epilogue: Fresh Fish at Your Door<\/strong><\/h2>\n