8 • April 2021
BUSINESS NEWS
Coast River Business Journal
Local food projects crowdfund their vision
Story by Edward Stratton
Coast River Business Journal
estratton@crbizjournal.com
Mike Domeyer and his partners at Tre-Fin Day
Boat Seafood Co. want to improve the quality and
sustainability of fresh fish coming to consumers.
Jared Gardner and his partners want to strengthen
the local food infrastructure in the lower Colum-
bia River region.
The two organizations, on either side of the
Columbia River, recently turned to crowdfunded
loans through the idealistic commercial lender
Steward as a means to move their dreams forward.
Steward, started in 2016 to help small, regener-
ative agriculture projects, lets members of the pub-
lic invest as little as $100 in loans to provide capi-
tal for farmers, ranchers, fishermen and other food
producers whose missions they support. Instead of
bank, the producers pay principal and interest back
to the people who supported them.
“I think what people don’t realize is that the
farmer still has very few funding options,” Dan
Miller, CEO of Steward, said in a video about the
company. “For me, I think there’s nothing more
active than directly funding one of these farms.”
Tre-Fin started six years ago as a group of sport
fishermen catching albacore tuna by rod and reel.
The company has since expanded into a year-round
operation taking in up to eight species of ground
fish — primarily black cod — from up to eight
boats during the summer tuna season. It processes
and freezes the fish the same day in a small barn-
like processing space on the Ilwaco, Washington,
waterfront.
Tre-Fin raised $260,000 through Steward to
buy a former laundromat downtown for a new
headquarters. Domeyer said the new building,
which Tre-Fin should close on by the middle of this
month, will triple the company’s processing space
and quadruple its cold storage. The new location
will also house a retail seafood shop and offices.
“That gives us the capacity to increase to our
goal,” he said. “Our capacity is simply the commit-
ments we make to local fishermen.”
The majority of Tre-Fin’s product went to Port-
land-area restaurants before the pandemic. The
company had to adapt after the virus restricted
dining, expanding to a network of farmers mar-
kets around the region. As dining reopens, Tre-
Fin wants the capacity to serve both the wholesale
restaurant and direct-to-consumer markets.
The increased capacity helps Tre-Fin, Domeyer
said, but also helps local fishermen get out from
under a highly consolidated market that suppresses
prices.
“It really consolidates it into high-impact fish-
ing that hurts our communities,” Domeyer said.
“So we’re trying to do something different, and it’s
a challenge.”
About a year ago, Tre-Fin started working with
North Coast Food Web in Astoria and Food Roots
HAILEY HOFFMAN/COAST RIVER BUSINESS JOURNAL
The partners behind the Astoria Food Hub raised $700,000 for a commercial loan to help buy a former Sears Hometown on Marine Drive in Astoria.
in Tillamook, two groups focused on building the
local food infrastructure. Through those local food
circles, he met Jared Gardner, who owns Nehalem
River Ranch and told Domeyer about Steward.
“I’d known Dan Miller for years,” Gardner
said. “And Tre-Fin really liked the idea. A lot of
what we talked about is (that) I personally want
my customers to be invested in us, or our investors
to become customers. Because that’s really what
keeps the money circulating in our communities.”
Gardner and several other partners recently
formed Astoria Food Hub and raised $700,000 to
buy the former Sears Hometown store on Marine
Drive in Astoria. By fall, the former home goods
store will reopen with a retail shop for local food
producers, a commercial kitchen for making val-
ue-added products and cold and dry storage. The
building will also host a regional distribution com-
pany Gardner said would provide more cost-effi-
cient connections between the North Coast, coastal
Southwest Washington and the Portland metro
area.
He envisions the food hub being a one-stop
shop for local food producers needing help with
storage, distribution and marketing.
EDWARD STRATTON/COAST RIVER BUSINESS JOURNAL
Tre-Fin Day Boat Seafood raised $260,000 for a commercial loan to buy a former laundromat in Ilwaco, Washing-
ton that will triple its processing space and double its cold storage.
“It’s really important to me that the produc-
ers hold onto their product as long as possible,”
Gardner said. “Because the longer they hold onto
it until someone consumes it, the more they can
keep money in their pocket. That’s a really import-
ant part of this vision.”
Astoria Food Hub will soon launch another
round of fundraising through Steward for the build-
out of the former Sears building. People interested
in supporting the Astoria Food Hub can sign up at
astoriafoodhub.com to be a part of future rounds
of fundraising.