Company Profile · Seafood E-Commerce
Manettas Seafood Market
The Sydney fish market that comes to your door - and the platform quietly rewiring how Australia trades its catch.
The Sydney fish market that comes to your door - and the platform quietly rewiring how Australia trades its catch.
Peter Manettas grew up walking the aisles of the Sydney Fish Market with his grandfather, a man who helped build the place. In 2016, the grandson took the family trade and pointed it at the internet - and the response was louder than anyone at the stall expected.
Manettas Seafood Market is an online fish market. That plain description undersells what the company actually assembled. It is a consumer storefront where a home cook in Sydney can order salmon sashimi, live lobster, oysters or a mixed seafood pack before midnight and have it arrive the next day. It is also, through a sister platform called ShoreTrade, a business-to-business marketplace where fishers and fisheries list their catch and sell it directly to wholesalers and traders. One company; two front doors onto the same supply chain.
The consumer business launched on 23 August 2016. The founder later admitted he thought it "might just be a small and quiet business that would slowly build." Instead, more than 5,000 people signed up on the first day, with 150 orders placed immediately and hundreds more across the opening week. "There was a much higher pull than expected," he said. The company had stumbled onto a simple truth: plenty of people want good seafood and dislike everything about buying it - the queues, the guesswork, the uncertainty over freshness.
What Manettas sells, then, is not only fish. It is confidence. Every product carries provenance. "Every single lobster has a tag on it so we know where it came from and who fished it," the founder has said. Seafood is sourced from producers across the country, from the Northern Territory down to Tasmania and across to Perth and South Australia. That traceability is the pitch, and it is the part a generic grocery app cannot easily replicate.
The company describes itself, tellingly, as more than a shop. "The site is becoming just as much a service as it is a market." Recipes from Australian chefs sit alongside the catch. Seasonal specials point customers toward what is good right now. For a category where the main barrier is not price but knowing-what-to-do, that curation is the product.
Every single lobster has a tag on it so we know where it came from and who fished it.
Fresh fish, shellfish, sashimi, oysters, prawns and lobster - now alongside meat, deli and grocery - with next-day delivery and cold-chain packaging built to keep it market-fresh in transit.
Everyday seafood lovers across Sydney and Australia on the retail side; restaurants, cafes, hotels and seafood wholesalers on the trade side through ShoreTrade and the wholesale marketplace.
Freshness is opaque, provenance is invisible, and getting to a good fishmonger is inconvenient. Manettas fixes the buying - traceability, logistics and recipes - so the cooking feels easy.
Anyone can build a store. Manettas' moat is a family's long-standing ties to Australian fishers, translated into software, tagged provenance and a working cold chain.
Revenue comes from direct-to-consumer sales, wholesale supply to hospitality, and the ShoreTrade B2B trading platform connecting fishers to buyers at home and abroad.
Founder Peter Manettas is a third-generation seafood seller; his grandfather helped establish the Sydney Fish Market. That knowledge underwrites sourcing and quality standards.
The consumer online fish market - the part most people meet first. Built for home cooks who want market quality without the market trip.
The digital trading platform for the seafood industry. Fishers and fisheries list their catch and sell direct to wholesalers and traders, domestically and globally.
Manettas sits at an unusual crossroads: part specialty food retailer, part grocery-delivery service, part B2B trading platform. Against the traditional fishmonger it wins on convenience and range. Against a general grocery app it wins on provenance, expertise and freshness. And with ShoreTrade it reaches upstream into the trade itself - a position few consumer seafood brands hold.
Peter Manettas opens the storefront in August; 5,000+ signups arrive on day one.
The B2B trading platform raises AUD $2M led by Investible to connect fishers with buyers.
Peter Manettas Seafood raises a Series A (reported ~USD $8M) co-led by Investible and Luxem, with Vulpes participating.
Platform activity reported across markets including China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, New Zealand and the UK.
A modernised site expands from seafood into meat, deli and grocery with next-day delivery.
Seed (ShoreTrade), 2018 - AUD $2M, led by Investible.
Series A, March 2021 - reported ~USD $8M, co-led by Investible and Luxem, with Vulpes Investment Management participating.
Every single lobster has a tag on it so we know where it came from and who fished it.
The site is becoming just as much a service as it is a market.
This might just be a small and quiet business - but there was a much higher pull than expected.
A Sydney-based online seafood market that delivers market-fresh fish, shellfish and gourmet groceries to homes and businesses across Australia, founded in 2016 by Peter Manettas.
Peter Manettas, a third-generation seafood seller whose grandfather helped establish the Sydney Fish Market. Nicholas Reid is the company's CEO.
ShoreTrade is Manettas' B2B digital trading platform that lets fishers and fisheries list and sell their catch directly to wholesalers and traders, domestically and internationally.
It offers next-day delivery across Sydney and wider Australia; orders placed before the daily cutoff are delivered the following day.
Yes - ShoreTrade raised an AUD $2M seed round in 2018, and Peter Manettas Seafood raised a Series A (reported ~USD $8M) in March 2021 co-led by Investible and Luxem.