How Yasmin Curtis turned her Chicago restaurant's seafood boil into a frozen product and made $2.6 m

June 2024 · 4 minute read
2022-10-20T10:00:00Z

Over the past two years, Yasmin Curtis has operated her Chicago restaurant at varying levels: Closed. Open for delivery. Limited capacity. Closed. Open. 

City and state restrictions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic determined her business hours. "You never recognized how you missed the noise until it was completely gone," Curtis told Insider. "At one point, we were closed for four months straight and then they would allow us to open at 25% capacity." 

Given the unpredictability, Curtis knew she needed a more reliable form of income than the foot traffic at Two Fish Crab Shack, the seafood restaurant she opened in 2016. 

In the summer of 2020, Curtis began packaging her signature seafood boil as a frozen meal and now sells the product in more than 1,000 store locations across the country, including at Albertsons, Safeway, Shaw's, Meijer, and Piggly Wiggly. From January to August 2022, Two Fish booked $2.6 million in sales, which Insider verified with documentation.

Here's how she started a consumer packaged goods business to broaden her customer base. 

Creating a frozen product from her signature seafood boil

Two Fish sells seafood boil with shrimp and snow-crab legs. Two Fish

Before the pandemic, Two Fish Crab Shack had an average wait time of 2 ½ hours to get a table. But Curtis wanted to create a product that customers didn't need to wait for and limited in-person contact. She had already bottled and sold the special sauce used in her seafood boils.

In summer 2020, she was invited to sell her food at a block party hosted by the local grocery store Mariano's. That day, Curtis sold frozen bags of her famous seafood boil from a rented ice-cream truck — and ended up selling 100 units in 20 minutes. 

An executive from the grocery chain, owned by Kroger, took notice and asked to stock her product at that location. The store helped Curtis find the right packaging and follow compliance regulations. 

"They were very instrumental in making sure that we got our product packaged correctly," she said. "It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for us." 

Inside the Two Fish Crab Shack restaurant in Chicago. Two Fish Crab Shack

Billboards to reach new demographics

When Curtis was first getting her frozen product into stores, she turned to an old-school marketing method: billboards. "We wanted to reach different demographics across Illinois," Curtis said. 

Billboard prices depend on the traffic per hour in that location, Curtis said. In 2020, prices were much lower because fewer businesses were buying advertising. Curtis used the pandemic discounts to her advantage and paid $5,000 for two billboard advertisements that lasted four weeks each. 

"The local stores came to us and then, after that, we were able to market to different category managers," she said. Category managers look at sales to determine how much of a product to order and where to place the products. Curtis said that once she got her product in one division, or territory, she had more access to others.

Today, prices for those same billboards have increased to $20,000 for six weeks, Curtis said. Instead of billboards, she now relies on social media and customer reviews to market her products. While she works with a few influencers, most content comes from unpaid clients who post about their experiences eating at the restaurant or cooking her frozen products at home. That also helps expand her audience to other states where people can't visit her restaurant. 

Customer feedback makes better products

Two Fish uses a special sauce in its seafood boil. Two Fish

Much of Curtis' business success has come from asking for feedback. It not only improves her products, but it's grown her customer base because they feel "welcomed and valued," she said. "I wanted people to feel like they were a part of the Two Fish experience."

For example, when older customers told Curtis that the batter on the fried catfish had too much salt for their diets, she created a low-sodium batter just for them. 

She's also expanded her frozen seafood boil to include corn and potatoes, which appealed to customers who wanted quick, complete dinners. And she's sold more units since then — stores in Tennessee and Alabama sold 2,000 units in three weeks, Curtis said. 

"They don't know who Two Fish is, they just know that this is a great product inside of the grocery store and that's it."

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7o8HSoqWeq6Oeu7S1w56pZ5ufonypu9Zmq6hlnZa4pnnYqKyrZZaev7TAjKagpaSZpLtutc1mqpqklah6s7HSrZiuqpGjwW6u1Kygp52jqHpzfJFrZGpo