THE LEADING PLATFORM FOR SOURCING SEAFOOD DIRECT FROM THE SOURCE.
Freshline is an online marketplace connecting restaurants and retailers directly to fishers, harvesters, and farmers. Using our automated logistics, customers can bypass multiple middlemen and source higher quality, traceable seafood, at leading prices.The spark behind Freshline stemmed from a 10+ year old friendship between founders Joseph Lee and Robert Kirstiuk.
While attending university at UBC and Western University respectively, the duo harkened back on Robert’s experiences growing up in rural New Brunswick. The focus of these discussions often narrowed on a common experience felt by disgruntled fishers in the Maritimes, who were often forced to sell their catch to middlemen at low profits.
Robert (L) and Joseph (R) pictured next to the Haste, operated by Skipper Larry Hillis.
This prompted a simple question: why don’t more businesses source direct from fishers, producers, co-ops, and farmers? This thought experiment revealed some staggering facts: seafood is often held in storage for weeks, is shipped overseas and back, changes hands multiple times, and is often misrepresented.
Furthermore, restaurants, grocers, and retailers lack visibility into available products, prices, and where their seafood comes from. Their ordering and delivery experience is often tainted with poor quality product, low standards, and inaccurate delivery ETAs.
With seafood becoming one of the fastest growing sectors of food, there’s an impetus to introduce improved sustainability measures across farming, sourcing, and consumption to better address the depletion of our resources.
Freshline aims to expedite the shift towards seafood transparency through improved supply chains, radical transparency, and the proliferation of sustainable aquaculture.Since its founding in 2016, Freshline is building the world’s leading platform for sourcing perishable goods direct from the source.
Through a unique, infrastructure-free model, Freshline’s automated supply chain and connected marketplace enables the company to scale efficiently into multiple markets with minimal warehousing, manual operations, or inventory.
Freshline’s online marketplace of fresh, frozen, and live seafood products.
This dramatically frees up resources to integrate technology through the supply chain – across sourcing, long haul, processing, last-mile, and the customer-facing platform. As a result, users gain access to full suite of traceability tools, including best-in-class analytics, metrics on product freshness, harvester data, and temperature logs.
Moreover, customers can accurately track pricing and availability data in real-time, filtering products by supply location and product type. They can quickly set up order guides and standing orders to reduce the time needed to complete everyday tasks.
Delivery tracking, dynamic invoicing, and automated payments allow businesses to operate smoothly and to track and plan around their next shipments. Freshline is led by a dynamic, young, and entrepreneurial team of engineers, marketers, and operators.
The company is backed by $2.5M+ in venture capital from AlphaQuest VC, Techstars, Next Canada, and a group of angels including Uber’s SVP, Head of UberEats, and the VP of Ticketmaster.The founders, Joseph and Robert, are alumni of Techstars Seattle, The Next 36, and are recipients of Forbes’ 30 Under 30 in 2018.
Mica, owner-operator of Effingham Oysters at his farm in Barkley Sound, B.C.
