Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Last year, Fortune also acquired Chicago specialty distributor JDY Meats, adding a range of nonseafood gourmet products such as Iberico hams and artisanal goods. They had always offered a small array of upscale nonseafood products like sushi rice for their sushi customers, but this represented a much bigger commitment to them—and required building out two more loading docks and the associated warehouse space.
The next room is the busiest—fish such as salmon, whitefish and tuna are cut up, boned, and portioned to order by eight or ten workers slicing three-foot-long fish apart as easily as if they were unzipping them. One thing about this room is that the waste doesn’t hang around the food—it goes out almost immediately to a bin back in the loading dock, where it’s collected to be turned into pet food.
