Seafood distributor AquaCuisine Inc. has moved its corporate headquarters from California to Boise.

The company, founded in 1994 in Campbell, Calif, finished its relocation late last month, opening a 2,000-square-foot office in the Boise Research Center off Cloverdale road near Hewlett-Packard. The business employs seven.

AquaCuisine distributes fresh and frozen seafood products to more than 2,000 retail stores in 40 states, primarily catering to the grocery industry. Products include salmon and tuna burgers, salmon franks and salmon sausages.

In October, The Business Journal in San Jose listed AquaCuisine as one of the Silicon Valley’s 100 fastest growing companies.

CEO Mark Goforth said he and his wife Traci moved the business to Boise for better quality of life. Another friend who had relocated to Boise earlier praised the city’s attributes, and the Goforths decided to take the plunge.

“The difference is that now I’m not commuting amongst a crowded concrete jungle,” said Goforth, 42. “I can look out at a snowcapped mountain range and I see fellow Boiseans with waders doing something called fly-fishing.”

The company’s formation is a culmination of Goforth’s lifelong passion for fishing, dating back to childhood summers fishing with his aunt and uncle in Ketchikan, Alaska.

AquaCuisine has partnered with distributors in San Francisco, Seattle, Minneapolis, and New Jersey that stock the company’s products and transport them to AquaCuisine clients nationwide. Fish processed are wild Alaskan salmon, most of which come from the coast of southeast Alaska and yellowfin tuna.

Grocery clients include supermarket chains Kroger and Safeway; warehouse clubs such as Costco; natural food stores such as Austin, Texas-based Whole Foods market; and independent outlets, such as the Boise Co-op. The Co-op carries AquaCuisine’s frozen boxed salmon burger and frozen salmon franks.

AquaCuisine also collaborates with private label grocers like Pasadena, Calif.-based Trader Joe’s, which imports food items from around the world, puts its own brand labels on them, and sells them in their own retails stores.

AquaCuisine recently formed a business alliance with Clear Spring Foods, a company operating a large trout farm in Buhl. AquaCuisine will soon begin working on new product development with Clear Springs, but Goforth said the project is too early in the planning stages to divulge details.

According to Goforth, AquaCuisine’s salmon burger and salmon frank are the first in the world to obtain on-pack label approval from the American Heart Association.
All products contain no artificial ingredients or preservatives and many are enriched with Omega –3, a naturally-occurring fatty acid in fish that research has shown may prevent heart disease.

Goforth said annual sales are approaching $5 million up from $400,000 in AquaCuisine’s first year. He attributed the company’s success to “vision, hard work, passion…and sheer brilliance.”