She Started a Side Hustle to Help Her Small Business Succeed

"Are You a CEO, Director, or Founder interested in a Feature Interview?"

All Interviews are 100% FREE of Charge

Yasmine Curtis’s popular seafood restaurant Two Fish Crab ShackBack then, wait times of two and a half hours were not uncommon for an à la carte seafood boil. The restaurant, which opened in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood in 2016, was inspired by the crowd-pleasing Seafood Friday concept that Curtis introduced at a former sports bar a few blocks away.

^{Image courtesy of Two Fish Distribution. Yasmin Curtis.}

Unfortunately, like many small businesses, Curtis’s Two Fish fell on hard times during the 2020 pandemic.

“Everybody thought we were going to have two weeks off,” Curtis said. entrepreneur“So I thought, Okay, then I’ll take a break for two weeks.In Chicago it was open, closed, open, closed, and then when it all started happening with the media and everything, I was like, “Oh, no, we’re not going to do this.” This is going to be very different.“

“We wanted them to be able to just pick it up and go.”

Curtis wanted to transform Two Fish’s service to address the ongoing challenges. Plus, he was confident that once the pandemic was over, customers wouldn’t be waiting in line for hours for seafood. The solution? Two types of fish foodare frozen meals that customers can purchase in store and prepare at home within minutes.

“Some people didn’t even trust that food would be delivered to their homes,” Curtis recalled, “so we wanted to make sure they could get their food and go home quickly.”

Two Fish’s frozen seafood bags, which contain shrimp, snow crab legs and special sauce, became an instant hit at a vendor fair hosted by Mariano’s, a local grocery store chain under the Kroger brand.

To make his dry side business a success, Curtis rented an ice cream truck, plastered the Two Fish logo on the side, loaded up 100 bags of frozen treats, and set up shop in front of a fitness center. He sold out in just 20 minutes.

RELATED: She made $3 million last year working at Costco on the side, despite ‘knowing nothing about running a business’

Naturally, Mariano’s was intrigued by Two Fish’s success and wanted to carry the brand.

“The staff at Kroger Mariano’s was extremely helpful in guiding us. [to] “We got the right packaging and labeling, and we actually found a distributor so we could get it delivered to Kroger,” Curtis said. “From there, the product just took off naturally. It was a good product. People loved it, saw it in the stores and wanted to buy it.”

Kroger initially rolled out Two Fish products in five Chicago-area stores, selling all of the items within the first weekend.

^{Images/Photos Courtesy of Two Fish Distribution}

“To be honest, it hasn’t been a smooth process.”

From there, Two Fish expanded into other local stores and continued to see strong sales, so Curtis decided to hire a sales team to expand into markets outside of the state. Two Fish then partnered with other retailers, including Harris Teeter, Safeway and Phoenix. With national distribution from these retailers and Kroger, Two Fish is sold in more than 5,000 stores, Curtis says.

And then there’s retail giant Walmart. Last summer, Curtis learned that Walmart was coming to Chicago looking for local, made-in-the-USA products. She was interested in the opportunity, but her operations manager warned her against it, because the growing company was already struggling to keep up with increased demand. “It wasn’t a smooth ride, to be honest,” Curtis says.

But another opportunity with the retailer comes in the form of its Open Call Small Business Presentation Program, which invites entrepreneurs to present products made, grown or assembled in the U.S. for a chance to sell on Walmart and Sam’s Club shelves and online. Curtis applied, knowing full well that “it could be a long walk in the dark.”

She then received an email informing her that she had been selected to participate in an open call for participants. Of the 20,000 applications, only 1,000 were invited, Curtis said.

RELATED: She started her business with $2,000 in personal savings and has since grown it to more than $100 million in revenue

“I’m happy that Two Fish has become well-known.”

Toofish went to category managers, cooked up the product and created a full experience for them, and they loved it, Curtis said.Toofish is now fully partnered with Walmart, with its products expected to hit about 500 stores by October of this year.

Curtis says he still can’t believe that Too Fish has become famous nationwide in such a short amount of time: “I’m happy that Van de Kamp’s company has made Too Fish a household name and become synonymous with seafood boils. [is] Comes with fish sticks and sea packs [is with] “Fried shrimp,” she says.

Of course, Two Fish’s incredibly successful turnaround was entirely bootstrapped, but it wasn’t without some challenges along the way.

The transition from restaurants to consumer packaged goods (CPG) comes with a “whole different learning curve” and different food regulatory guidelines: While a restaurant may know where its fish is sourced, companies selling packaged goods “need to know what pond those crab legs came from” to meet sustainability and traceability standards, Curtis said.

RELATED: To escape a cancer scare, she expanded her business from her kitchen to 3,500 Walmart stores Here’s the secret to health and success.

The distance between CPG companies and their customers creates another obstacle, Curtis said: If a customer has a problem at a restaurant, management can go to the customer’s table to resolve the issue, but that’s not possible when the customer buys something to take home.

“So the level of precision required for each product is much higher than meets the eye,” Curtis says.[It’s not]”‘OK, I’ll just put it in a bag and send it off.’ That’s a huge misconception. When you’re sending out thousands of items a month, you don’t have the opportunity to fix something if it goes wrong.”

“If you want people to ask you about yourself, you have to create that buzz.”

Entrepreneurs looking into CPG would do well to remember that the sector comes with unique challenges, even for those with extensive business experience like Curtis.

Curtis also suggests getting to know the specialty foods you’re trying to sell well to build enthusiasm and customer support for your product. “I know this is a cliché, but I remember years ago when I was in sales, and someone said to me, I want people to come to me, but how do I go about doing that?” she says. “Because if you want people to ask you about yourself, you have to create that buzz.” [People have to] I really like your product.”

This article is part of our ongoing Women Entrepreneur® series, showcasing the stories, challenges and successes of running a business as a woman.