During startup mode, an entrepreneur will go to great lengths to get their product or service in front of potential customers. Matthew Wiseman knocked on the back delivery doors of area restaurants to show off the fresh fish he kept on ice in a cooler in the back of his vehicle.
“I was one of Matthew’s first customers, and he had a high-quality product,” says Chef Anthony Lombardo, owner of SheWolf Pastificio & Bar and Medusa Cucina Siciliana, both located along Selden Street in Midtown Detroit.
“He thinks like a chef. You see startups with meats and vegetables, but it’s pretty rare to see a seafood startup because the fish are so perishable.”
Wiseman and his wife, Staci Hayman, were both in the hospitality industry when they first met in Vancouver. After getting married and moving to Plymouth, the pair launched Motor City Seafood Co. in August 2017 with a $50,000 investment.
“In the beginning, it was just the two of us,” says Hayman, who oversees operations and administration at Motor City Seafood. “We would take the orders, process the fish, and make the deliveries. We didn’t have credit at first, so all the orders were paid for in cash.”
Within three months, Hayman says, “the phone started ringing off the hook, plus we got credit.”
The couple started with five different offerings — branzino, steelhead, orata, and two different salmon species. Today, there are 2,400 different products, including meats, which account for 15 percent of overall sales.
“When I met Chef Anthony, he asked if we could filet the fish, which I admitted we didn’t know how to do,” says Wiseman, a native of New Zealand who, in addition to doing hospitality work, was a former fish salesman. “But we quickly learned how to filet fish.
“In the beginning, I wasn’t shy about knocking on the back doors of restaurants and introducing myself. Sometimes it would take 12 phone calls to get on a restaurant’s radar, but once we did, we just simply provided the best fish possible. It helped that I had relationships with suppliers that sold quality fish.”
After starting out in a 1,200-square-foot former electrical building in the Old Village area of downtown Plymouth, which the couple selected due to its close proximity to Detroit Metro Airport in Romulus, they moved the business in April 2023 to a 44,000-square-foot former pharmaceutical building along Oakland Avenue in Highland Park.
Today, the company has more than 700 clients including Delta Air Lines, Joe Muer Seafood, the Detroit Pistons, Plum Market, Baker College, Schoolcraft College, Continental Catering, and multiple restaurants, country clubs, and athletic clubs. The company distributes its products across Michigan and northern Ohio.
“As we expanded, we found there wasn’t a lot of talent fileting fish, so we began training people and today we have 63 employees,” Wiseman says. “We get started very early in the morning, and by 9 a.m. or 10 a.m., we’re wrapping things up except for deliveries.
“We also became known for finding rare fish, like greenbone butterfish, bluenose, and pompano. Overall, we’ve managed everything better, so there’s no waste.”
