How To Order Seafood & Fresh Fish Online
In this article, we start with an overview of online ordering and finding the right seafood supplier for attaining the best fresh seafood available. From there, we will break down the ordering system for this very website, WildSeafoodMarket.com. Chances are good that these same steps will apply to most other USA-based retail seafood suppliers.
Selecting your online seafood company
First off, be sure to select a seafood supplier who adheres to the United States’ strict sustainable fishing policies. This both helps to further sustainable fish populations and assures you’ll receive actual fresh fish or shellfish.
To learn more about selecting the best online seafood site, give this article a read: How can I support sustainable fishing?.
How Our Online Seafood Shop Works
Craving for fresh fish and seafood yet having no time to travel to and from the local seafood market? Well, good news! It’s now much easier to get your supply of fresh seafood using our online shop at the WildSeafoodMarket.com website. We’ve been catering to local and national markets since 2011, establishing our brand as a top choice for commercial and direct-to-consumer seafood delivery.
Whether you need fresh fish or shellfish like clams, scallops, crabs, shrimp, or oysters, we have you covered. Simply place your order online and we’ll have them delivered right outside your doorsteps. We ship nationwide and if you live in Florida, you get to choose a cheaper shipping option. Live near our market in Madeira Beach, Florida? Enjoy local pickup – free of shipping charges.
And if you’re worried about where your seafood is coming from, even more reason to entrust your fish and seafood supply to us. At Wild Seafood Market, our main mission is to supply our customers with sustainably harvested, fresh, quality seafood. We’ve always aimed to set the bar higher when it comes to responsible and sustainable fishing.
Below, we will guide you on how to order fresh fish using our online seafood market.
Selecting the right seafood for your needs
Wild Seafood Market offers a wide array of fresh seafood. What you’ll find on our primary shop pages are our currently available options. We do not deep-freeze our seafood, so what we have in-stock is always fresh. The downside to this system; we don’t always have every species and option available for our customers. It’s a worthwhile trade-off, and we’ll never change this system.
How much fish do I need to order for a family meal?
Fish we sell is most commonly priced per pound of the whole fish. The exceptions are larger fish like Gag Grouper and Blackfin Tuna, as shipping the whole fish is not possible with the size of coolers we use for shipping. Also, any fish above the 5-pound threshold will have to be filleted before being shipped.
Once a fish is filleted it yields roughly 35% of edible meat. For each adult party of your intended meal, we recommend roughly a pound of whole fish or roughly five and a half ounces of filleted fish. Thus, if you have a family of five, order a five-pound whole fish to feed the family.
What does Wild Seafood Market stock during the year?
We have stone crab claws, Gulf brown shrimp, lobster tails, Key West pink shrimp, scallops, Joe’s Island clams, and various fish including grouper, snapper, Amberjack and even Blackfin tuna.
Each of these seafood products offers various options at various price points to suit your needs. Looking for delicious stone crab claws? We sell medium, large, jumbo, and floaters. Our medium option includes about 5-8 claws per pound, the large option includes 4-5 claws per pound, and the jumbo option includes 3 claws per pound.
For our Gulf brown shrimp, these are available head-on and head-off. You can choose your preference from the drop-down option on the order page. The fresh Maine lobster tail is sold in two size options – 3-4oz and 6-7oz. Meanwhile, our Key West pink shrimp are available in 16/20 pound or in bulk 5lbs option. These are Individually Quick Frozen (IQF) offshore for the best quality.
Wild Seafood Market sells dry and chemical-free New Bedford scallops. Like the Key West pink shrimps, the scallops are Individually Quick Frozen (IQF) to ensure the quality remains top-notch. You can buy these in 10/20s and U10s – 10-20 per pound or Under 10. As for the Joe’s Island clams, there are three size options available – little neck, middle neck, and top neck.
When ordering any of these seafood products, simply go to their respective pages on our online shop, choose the options you like, add it to cart, choose your shipping option, and proceed with the payment process. Please note that some of these are available depending on the season and what our boats bring in.
Size | Whole, Filleted, Skin-On & Skin-Off
On most of our available fresh fish product pages, you’ll find two primary drop-down boxes:
- Size: Sizes for whole fish can range from .5 all the way up to 10 pounds. You will notice that the available options often seem random, such as 2, 4 & 7 pounds for persay our Red Snapper. This simply means that the fresh Red Snappers we have on hand at the time of your order are 2, 4 and 7 pounds in size.
*Note: Any fish ordered above five pounds will need to be filleted before it is shipped. - Preperation: You may then choose from four primary preperation options:
Whole fish scalled finned and gutted: You’ll recieve a whole fish that has had the scales, fins and guts removed.
Only available for 5-pound and smaller fish unless you are picking your order up locally.
Whole fish ‘as-is’ (gutted): We won’t take the scales or fins off, but we will go ahead and gut the fish for you.
Only available for 5-pound and smaller fish unless you are picking your order up locally.
Filleted Skin On & Filleted Skin Off: Depending on how to plan to cook the fish you may want to leave the skin on, if going on the grill for instance
What’s better, filleted or whole fish?
Personally, I prefer to get my fish as a whole fish and fillet it at home however, I’ve spent a lot of time filleting fish and am quite good at it. I’d especially order my fish whole if I were ordering out of state. Filleting the fish just prior to cooking allows for the greatest amount of freshness, and therefore flavor, to remain intact. However, some would say the flavor difference is hardly noticeable, and as the experts at Wild Seafood Market likely will yield more filleted fish per pound then the average Joe, there’s certainly a great advantage to having them fillet the fish. Plus, once the fish is filleted our online system will automatically update your order weight to be significantly lower, thus lowering your shipping costs.
Shipping Selection
We ship your orders every Monday to Thursday at 3pm EST. Cut off time for same-day shipments is 1pm EST. For example, if you place your order before 1pm from Monday thru Thursday, it will ship the same day. Orders placed after 1pm from Monday thru Wednesday will be shipped the next day. Orders placed after 1pm on Thursday or during the weekends will be shipped the following Monday.
If you live in Florida, you can have your orders shipped using either Ground or Overnight options. All out-of-state orders are only shipped using Overnight. During the checkout process, you will be asked to enter your Zip Code and the shipping options available in your area will be displayed. For those who live in Pinellas County near Madeira Beach, a local pickup option is available. Simply drop by our store at Dons Dock to scoop your order.