Flanagan’s Fish Merchants, the renowned fish shop in Waterford City has recently launched two new seafood product ranges that are sure to prove popular with new and existing customers. With assistance from Bord Iascaigh Mhara’s (BIM’s) Seafood Development Centre in Clonakilty, Co. Cork, the company has produced a range of healthy pre-pack fish meals for families and a new range of summer seafood offerings that are perfect for cooking on the BBQ this summer.
Pictured L-R: John Whittle Flanagan’s; Aine Whittle Flanagan’s; Aileen Deasy, BIM’s Seafood Technologist, SDC, Clonakilty, Co Cork and Katie Healy, B.I.M SDC Clonakilty, Co Cork.
Founded by Martin J Flanagan over 100 years ago, Flanagan’s remains a family business with John Flanagan and his brother Brendan at the helm. The company recognises that a large proportion of their customers have very busy lifestyles and want easy to cook seafood with little or no preparation required.
The ‘Catch of the Day’ pre-pack range was developed with this in mind and aimed at families, Flanagan’s use fresh, locally caught and in season fish on the day of production. The product also includes a choice of seasoning from Mediterranean inspired crumb recipes such as herb crumb and pesto or Spanish style crumbs and red pesto. Flanagan’s also offer a range of flavoured butters to accompany your choice of fish including lemon and dill butter, anchovies and sundried tomatoes butter, tarragon and lemon zest butter and coriander and chilli butter.
The Flanagan’s BBQ range is sure to prove popular with a selection of fish and seafood skewers available at the fresh fish counter in addition to marinated tuna, swordfish and salmon and whole fish for the BBQ. A range of marinades including ginger, spiced, shallots and capers and balsamic are also available to customers this month.
John’s wife Aine Whittle was instrumental in developing the new products. Being a busy working Mum she found it hard to find easy to cook healthy seafood meals for the family other than frozen fish fingers, pies and fillets. With such an abundance of fresh fish available, Aine developed the concept for a pre-pack fresh seafood family friendly product and Aine approached BIM’s Seafood Innovation team for further assistance. The BIM team of Seafood Technologists were able to help Aine to trial a variety of product offerings and packaging formats using the expertise and technology in the centre without Flanagan’s committing to any capital expenditure.
Aine explains how excited the company are about their new ranges and the future; ‘We are really looking forward to feedback from our customers, both our regulars and new customers. We put a lot of work into the products to ensure there are the best they can be and the assistance we received from BIM’s Seafood Development Centre, particularly on the packaging and the taste testing of the marinades, was crucial to the overall quality of the product. We change our recipes every three to four weeks to keep it interesting and now that summer has finally arrived, we have high hopes for our BBQ range in particular. As a well-established fishmongers, we know all about seafood and we can advise you on what to buy, how to cook it and with these easy to cook products, there is no excuse not to eat seafood!’
Aileen Deasy, Seafood Technologist, BIM explains how she worked with Flanagan’s; ‘Aine and John have been a pleasure to work with and from the very first day it was clear how well they knew their customer base. Aine’s attention to detail and understanding of quality and flavour are a huge part of the success of these products. What we can offer companies are the tools and expertise to bring their product ideas to life. We are very excited to see the new range available in the new fish shops and we are certain that everybody lucky enough to live in the South East will be enjoying these products for a long time to come’
