• by Erik Oster , August 17, 2023

Denver-based Tocabe Indigenous Marketplace and Minnesota-based Red Lake, Inc. teamed up to acquire a 50% stake in Arctic Circle Wild Seafood (ACWS), an Alaska seafood company owned by the husband-and-wife team Michael and Lydia Scott.

Based in the regional trading village of Kotzebue, Alaska, ACWS will now operate under shared ownership of the three Native-owned companies. In a statement, Red Lake Chief Development Officer Jaycob Robinson said the arrangement allowed the companies ““to bring high quality, Indigenous sourced wild Alaskan salmon to a bigger audience.”

The companies involved see the relationship as a mutually beneficial partnership rather than mere acquisition story, Ben Jacobs, Tocabe co-founder and member of the Osage Nation, explained. “It’s about the growth of many, not just one,” he told Marketing Daily.

The arrangement furthers Tocabe and Red Lake’s goal of building a more sustainable and accessible food system by and for Native people through their Red Lake Nation Foods enterprise.

The evolution of Tocabe from its roots as a standalone Denver restaurant, into the online Tocabe Indigenous Marketplace goes back around a decade but has accelerated in recent years, due to market and consumption changes begun during the pandemic, Jacobs said.

Earlier this year, Tocabe introduced its Direct-to-Tribe Ready Meal Program, which debuted by providing ready-to-eat meals to Spirit Lakes Nation in North Dakota. The company plans to expand the program to provide ready-to-eat meals to food-insecure individuals within Native communities both on reservations and in urban food-insecure centers.

“Our goal is to continue to invest,” Jacobs said, both in terms of purchasing additional products from Native producers and acquisitions when the right opportunities arise. “We’re in no way pushy about it…not going in and actively seeking to buy people out,” he explained, but instead engaging in opportunities  “when companies like this want to pursue growth through what we can bring.”

“A big mantra of ours is Native first, local second,” he said. ”A lot of specialized food companies will stay very localized…we find it important we are investing in Native communities.”

Tocabe has been strategic about the location of the companies it has partnered with, allowing it expand through partnerships into new areas of the country, and the food ecosystem. The new arrangement sees them investing in one of the northernmost fisheries in Alaska.

“We’re still a very small company, but it is a major mission of ours not only to grow the Native food structure but to put skin in the game,” he added, “to put our money where our mouth is and show a commitment to them that we’re not another purchaser, When we’re with you, we’re with you for the long haul.”