How Premier Catch built a wild seafood recipe library that keeps working

Premier Catch sells wild seafood from Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, and since 2021 the team has published 439 recipes on Recipe Kit to show customers what to do with it. Over the past year those recipes drew about 185,000 views, and 84% of them went to recipes published in 2024 or earlier.

The library teaches people to cook what Premier Catch sells. A shopper who has never cooked wild Pacific halibut finds a recipe, learns how, and sees the fillet they need right on the page. In a typical month, around 400 of the 439 recipes find readers, and 429 of them link to a Premier Catch product.

This story is part of the Recipe Kit case study library. It belongs there because Premier Catch shows what a seafood brand's recipes can still do four and five years after they were written.

The challenge

Premier Catch was founded in 2020 by sisters-in-law Joci and Ashley Besecker. Joci is the CEO. Ashley is a registered dietitian nutritionist. The Besecker family has worked in seafood for generations, from fishing Alaska and the Pacific Northwest to buying on the docks and selling to restaurants. The brand's story page credits their late father-in-law, Dana F. Besecker, with the standard of honesty and integrity the company still runs on.

The mission is to help people live better and longer by making it simpler to find, buy, and prepare sustainable wild seafood. Premier Catch puts a lot of weight on sourcing, quality, and transparency, under the promise "Always Wild, Never Farmed." The bigger challenge, Joci says, is helping customers feel confident buying and preparing wild seafood at home, especially a species they have not tried, like sablefish or king salmon. Recipes are how Premier Catch builds that confidence, and how customers find new ways to enjoy wild seafood.

We spoke with Joci Besecker, Premier Catch's CEO and co-founder, about how the library works.

Do recipes change what people are willing to order?

We want someone to discover a recipe, feel excited to make it, and know exactly where to find the seafood they need.

She says the answer is yes, and that the goal is to make wild seafood approachable for home cooks:

People may love eating fish but aren't always confident preparing it themselves, especially species they're less familiar with, like sablefish or halibut.

Our recipes help take the guesswork out of cooking seafood and give customers inspiration beyond their usual salmon dinner. It's about building confidence and making wild seafood a regular part of their routine.

Recipe Kit data shows how the 439 recipes map to the catalog. The biggest sellers each have dozens of recipes:

• Wild Alaskan Sockeye Salmon appears in 64 recipes.
• Wild Albacore Tuna appears in 61.
• Wild Pacific Halibut appears in 40.
• Wild Alaskan King Salmon appears in 38.
• Dungeness Crab Meat appears in 35.

Premier Catch's Weeknight Pan Seared Cod, which links to the brand's Wild Alaska Cod.

The cod recipe is a good example of the format. It is a short, reliable method for one species, and the fish it calls for is one click away. It was one of the most viewed recipes in the library over the past year.

Who develops the recipes, and how does a dietitian shape them?

Our recipes are a mix of family favorites, original creations, and inspiration from dishes and cooking trends we love. We want them to be approachable, delicious, and realistic for home cooks, whether that's a quick weeknight dinner or something special for entertaining.

Ashley brings an important nutrition perspective to our brand as a registered dietitian nutritionist. She's passionate about the connection between nutrition and long-term health, particularly the benefits of omega-3 fatty acids and high-quality protein found in wild seafood. That philosophy influences the content we create.

The family favorites are easy to spot. Some recipes carry the family's own names, like Cousin Kelly's Dungeness Crab Benedict and Besecker's Classic Crab Cakes with Homemade Remoulade Sauce. Others are plain weeknight dinners. Readers have left more than 4,300 ratings across the library, with an average of 4.2 stars.

We want to show people that eating well doesn't have to be complicated or boring.

Recipes that keep working years later

Recipe Kit data for October 2025 through September 2026 shows how much of the library's reach comes from its back catalog:

• About 185,000 recipe views in the 12 months.
• 84% of those views went to recipes published in 2024 or earlier.
• Recipes from 2021, the brand's first year on Recipe Kit, still drew about 18% of all views. Premier Catch Pan-Seared Halibut and Dungeness Crab Cakes with Simple Tartar are both from June 2021, and both were in the top five.

The calendar matters too. Recipe views in January 2026 were about four times the June level, and December and January together brought a third of the year's traffic. Holiday seafood is a predictable peak, and a library this size is ready for it before the season starts.

What is the story behind the McConaughey tuna salad?

The single biggest recipe was Matthew McConaughey's Viral Tuna Salad. The team published it in December 2024 and built it around their Wild Albacore Tuna. Nearly two years later it brought in about 34,000 views over the 12 months, close to one in five of the library's total. It also led the library in add-to-carts. Joci explains where it came from:

We love finding ways to connect trending recipes with our wild seafood. When Matthew McConaughey's tuna salad went viral, it was a natural fit for our wild albacore tuna, so we created our own version. We suspect much of the traffic comes from organic search, with people looking for the recipe after seeing it on social media.

A follow-up, Matthew McConaughey's Viral Tuna Salad Bites, turned the same idea into an appetizer.

It's a great example of how timely content can continue attracting new visitors long after the original trend.

Why lean into high-protein recipes?

Premier Catch published seven new recipes between late July and early October 2026. Several are built around protein, like High-Protein Jalapeño Tuna Avocado Salad, Jalapeño Albacore Tuna Cakes with Lime Crema, and Garlic Albacore Tuna Stuffed Avocados. The store also has collections for protein-dense seafood for GLP-1 routines and high-protein favorites, next to a seafood nutrition blog with more than 160 articles.

We've always believed wild seafood is one of the best foods you can incorporate into a healthy diet. With more people focusing on protein intake, healthy aging, and nutrition while using GLP-1 medications, we see an opportunity to help customers make informed food choices.

Our recipes make it easier for customers to turn those nutritional benefits into meals they'll actually enjoy. Rather than focusing on restrictive diets or short-term trends, our goal is to help people build healthy, sustainable eating habits.

The newest recipe, Crispy Rice Salmon Salad, fits the same pattern: a protein-forward dinner with the fish for it linked on the page.

How Recipe Kit supports the system

Recipe Kit gives each of the 439 recipes a structured recipe card with schema markup, ratings, and a print view, so a page from 2021 presents the same way to search engines and readers as a page from last week. Premier Catch does not have to touch theme code to keep that working.

Product linking puts the right fish on the page. When a recipe calls for sockeye or Dungeness crab meat, the ingredient links straight to the product, which is how 429 recipes became a path to the catalog. The recipe analytics then show which recipes people read, print, and add to cart from, so the team can see that a 2021 halibut recipe is still pulling its weight. For more on the search side, see how recipe structured data works.

A library of 439 recipes also needs a way in. Premier Catch recently updated the search and filters on its recipe library, so shoppers can search and then narrow by seafood, cooking method, and meal type. The team says it has also started using Recipe Kit's downloadable share images to feature recipes on its social media channels.

Lessons for meat and seafood brands

• Write a recipe for each species you sell. Premier Catch has 35 or more recipes for each of its five most-used products. A shopper who is unsure about halibut is looking for a halibut recipe.
• Treat old recipes as assets. Most of Premier Catch's views in the past year went to recipes from 2024 or earlier. Keep the best ones accurate and linked to products that are in stock.
• Connect a trending dish to your product. The McConaughey tuna salad went up while the dish was in the news and was still the top recipe almost two years later.
• Make a big library easy to browse. Filters for species, method, and meal type help a shopper find the right recipe among hundreds.
• Stock the library before the holiday peak. December and January brought a third of Premier Catch's recipe traffic. Recipes published in the fall have time to be found.

More seafood stories from the case study library: how Sizzlefish pairs seafood boxes with recipes, how Wild Planet turns canned fish into a habit, and how Snake River Farms uses recipes to sell Wagyu. For the bigger picture, read our guide to content marketing for food and drink brands.