from staff
Harry Frisch, who soon turns 88, took over his mother’s fish market with his brother, Alfred, decades ago. The fresh fish store on the Westside has grown the past 60 years into Beaver Street Fisheries Inc., an international supplier of frozen seafood and other food items to food service, retail and other wholesale accounts. The company imports more than 2,000 shipping containers of seafood and meat annually from more than 50 countries. It has partnered with the Jacksonville Sharks to name Sea Best Field at the Arena after its flagship brand.
Beaver Street Fisheries employs more than 400 people and is based at 1741 W. Beaver St., developing the site into a modern warehouse facility covering more than two city blocks and housing a seafood processing plant. Frisch also leads the Beaver Street Foundation, a charitable organization that supports many nonprofits.
Frisch is recording the story of his life beginning with his move to the United States from his birthplace, Vienna, Austria. This interview focuses on his life in Jacksonville. Frisch met with Daily Record reporters last week in his office.
How did Beaver Street Fisheries start?
Beaver Street Fisheries started out with my mother and my stepfather and my brother. They came from up north. In 1950, they bought a fish market on Beaver Street.
I came to Jacksonville in 1953, and by trade at that time, I was an automobile mechanic. For about two years, I still had a shop with two other guys and did real fine.
In 1955, my stepfather passed away, and they didn’t do all that well over there. I had two choices. I had to close up the place or I had to give up my automobile repair business and whatever money I had to put it in there, and that’s the decision that I made.
For whatever reason, I felt that the physical work for being an automobile mechanic by the time I was about 30 years old, it was questionable. I felt I could not make a good living in the future because I couldn’t get the people to work to the standards that I was used to. Rather than staying with that, I decided to put whatever I had into the fish market, and that’s where my career started in 1955.
The first year, I still remember, I’ve got a composition book at home, we had sales of about $44,000. From the $44,000, my mother had to make a living. My brother, myself with my wife and two children, we had to pay the mortgage, we had to buy fish and sell fish. That’s how we started out.
How did you progress?
My brother and I decided, no matter what it takes, we’re going to make it work, and it doesn’t make a difference how much work it takes.
We figured out one thing. The fish market by itself, if people would come in 24 hours a day, we still could not reach the goal that we set for ourselves.
We decided to start selling to some fish restaurants. We’d sell five pounds of shrimp, 10 pounds of fish filet, whatever it is, just little by little.
We had one advantage. I didn’t have an education. Had seven grades at school, and that’s all I had, so basically we had to figure everything out by ourselves.
The most important thing was the gift of people service, and that is true to today.
Plus there were other considerations, to make sure when we promise something, we keep it. We don’t lie to the people, we don’t try to steal from them, we don’t try to cheat them.
That is really our culture until today. So be it as it may, we built it up a little bit, got it right, and people started to depend on us.
What was the day like?
At that time, my brother was getting on the telephone early in the morning, calling up the different customers to get a delivery two or three hours later, and I got up early at 5 a.m. to be on the truck.
I went out to New Berlin and Mayport to buy some fish and shrimp whenever we could, then came back.
I was probably sitting just a little while on the telephone, then went to the pickup truck and went out delivering.
Basically that really gave us an opportunity to learn everything, what needs to be known, until today. There is really nothing that we didn’t do ourselves.
At that time, we could buy frozen (fish), but it was not prevalent much in those days. At the same time, we started buying fish not only from here and from Mayport, but from all the way down the state.
Many times on a Saturday, we went out to the west coast fish houses. We bought fish to have something to sell the next week.
Of course, Sunday (was) the time to fix and repair the trucks so they can run the next week, because they were not the newest trucks at that time.
But that’s the way it worked.
Obviously, we’re doing a business with some frozen fish. First we had to buy a freezer, about eight-by-ten, that was our freezer. But we eventually added a freezer 20 by 40, and had offices on top of it.
We started using the freezer to buy some frozen foods. It was the beginning of our growth into different products.
You mentioned customer service.
It was just as hard at that time to get a customer as it is today.
I remember my brother was sitting on the telephone and he called Ponte Vedra Inn on the beach. Needless to say, they were satisfied with what they had, and I remember the chef cussed him out. He says, ‘don’t you ever call me anymore every day.’
So my brother says, ‘let me tell you one thing. I don’t care what you say, I don’t care what language you’re using, as long as you have a telephone over there, I will call you every day for the rest of my life and your life.’
I couldn’t tell you how long that went on, until one day, the chef called him up.
He says, ‘well you know, I need something in an hour. Can you handle it?’
Well, he had what he needed in an hour. At that time, that particular customer in Ponte Vedra eventually became our best account.
It was basically that kind of determination. You can never give up, and it’s not any different today. You’ve got to make a commitment.
How did you grow from there?
The business started picking up. We had more people, more volume. We ran out of space, and my mother had the fish market. We came down here and started working out from here. We tried to expand. Everything went fine, we started adding people.
All the people started working from the ground up. Coming in, you had to clean fish, pack them, stack them up. A box of fish with ice probably weighs about 150 pounds. It’s hard work.
At the same time, when we bought the property here, part of it used to be a fish house. There also was a freezer. It put us into position to try to follow up other businesses. One of the things that we followed up was a company in Miami owned by two Cuban gentlemen. They went out of business and we could pick that company up for a reasonably small amount, so we bought that company, so basically we had a place in Miami.
Until my brother passed away about five, six years ago, we decided we’re going to accomplish one day that nobody can tell us what to do, and we can afford what to do and come and go whenever we want.
For that we were willing to work. It took seven days a week, many hours a day.
You also developed an operation in the Bahamas that grew over the decades. How large is your operation?
In Jacksonville, we have got about 240 people on the payroll. We do have a lot of people working on a temporary basis, the average is about 100 to 150 people. People that come to work in the office and sales and buying, we require that they work in the warehouse, at least one to two years. When they come up here, they know how to deal with the warehouse, what the warehouse can do, what the packing plant can do, and all the people being efficient.
We used to be in food distributing. Sysco came up, probably the largest food distributors in the world today, they wanted the business more than we did, so we decided to sell that portion of the business to Sysco.
The business that is left splits up again in two: Customers of institutional trade, and retail trade.
In the Bahamas, about 12 years ago, we built that facility. I think we are as respected a company as a foreign company can be respected anyplace.
I figure we’ve been more than fortunate. Of course our biggest fortune is good luck plus good health. If we were not in good health, all that could not have been done. Impossible. So that is the biggest blessing that we had.
But you take today, interactive business, interconnections, and some places where we tried to help to make a difference. We’ve got the Farmers Market across the street today. The Farmers Market to us is not a profit center. We give it back as a benefit for Jacksonville to have a real farmers market. We’ve got people coming seven days a week, all day long, big trucks coming in, and restaurants, and wholesalers, and supermarkets coming and buying their goods over there.
We tried to give back a little here and there, whatever we can.
In that picture over there (on his office wall), you’ve got the former sheriff, you’ve got Corrine Brown, you’ve got Sen. Bill Nelson, and you’ve got Tom Petway, and you’ve got Jerry Holland.
We are friends with all the people.
Today in most hospitals, when you see benefactors, you see our name somewhere. We’ve been trying to give back, make a little bit of difference.
You’ve been in business since before a lot of those people were born, so that helps, too. You’ve created independence.
After those 55 years, I got one thing. There’s not a thing in the world anybody can tell me, or my family, or the business (to do).
We get an IRS audit every three-four years, automatically. I don’t lose one second’s sleep because to my best knowledge, there is nothing, I mean, nothing, that is not 100 percent right.
It is nonexisting that anybody has ever been told to change one penny on any entry in order to change something. I’ll tell you one thing. I’d better not catch anybody do something like that.
You come in every day, do you not?
I’m not here on Sundays, but usually on Saturdays I’m here. But there’s an answer to that, because if you do something you enjoy, it’s not work. So I’m not working, I’m enjoying what I’m doing. But then, it’s the only hobby I’ve got because I never had time for anything else.
You have a lot of family members in the business.
I had both of my sons. My older son, he spent most of the time in the Bahamas, and of course my brother, he’s been everything outside. I’ve been inside, and my younger son here retired about three years ago, and he handled all of the food distributing business.
At this moment, I’ve got three of my grandchildren. They are all extremely smart, all doing a good job. They might not have all the experience because they’re not that long out of college, but I think our company’s in good hands. I’m looking for a terrific future for the company.
Again, our respect for the customers, there is hardly anybody that can match it. To give you an example, I had one of the big consulting firms trying to find out how we did business.
He asks, ‘what’s your most important thing in your business?’ So I say, ‘you’re the consultant. You’re supposed to be knowing everything. You tell me.’
He says, ‘well, you know, I think the most important thing in the business, you’ve got to have good quality products.’
I told him it makes sense, you’ve got to have it, but I don’t think it’s the most important thing.
So he says, ‘well, then it’s got to be the price.’
I say, ‘yeah, you’ve got to be competitive. But it’s still not the most important thing.’
He says, ‘well, what is it?’
I say, ‘look here. Let’s say you have a customer, you have a wedding or something, you’ve got 100 people coming to that party. And you’ve got to be ready Sunday at noon. And something happens, and the product doesn’t come in time.
‘I can have the best price, and the best quality, but if I don’t give the service in time, the other things are negative.’
Service is more important than all the rest of it.
Do you think that came from your own philosophy, or do you think that came from spending so many years in the fresh fish business?
I’ve been accusing some of the people that they have too much education. I think they ought to go back to college and get a refund.
What I’m trying to say is this. Everything we had to figure out, I had to figure out by myself, with my brother, or maybe with some people that we have around. But I had to figure it out for myself.
A lot of things we’re doing differently today than most anybody else. Take people. Of course today, we have a human resources manager, doing a terrific job. You’ve got to have it.
But in the past, I could talk to a person 10 minutes, and I like him or I don’t like him. Not too long ago, there was one person, I wanted to hire him, and (the human resources) came back, saying, I can’t hire them, I haven’t got the resume.
I say, ‘give me the paper.’ I put my fingerprint down. I say ‘you’ve got a resume now.’
You’ve got other conditions. Most companies today tell an employee, ‘well, once you leave you can never come back.’ To me, that doesn’t make sense.
If I have a good man, if he gets an offer from another place that is more than I can afford to pay him, what I’m doing is this.
If a man comes to me like a gentleman, and says, ‘look here, Mr. Frisch, I got an offer, what should I do?’ So I tell him, ‘I cannot match that. So if you think it’s the right thing for you to do, you take the job. I’ll help you all I can.’
Let’s say I manage to talk him out of it. I lost him for the rest of his life. It means basically he’s going to think now and forever, ‘maybe I should have taken the job. Maybe I should not have listened to Mr. Frisch.’
That means he’s going to be unhappy for now and ever. For that, I don’t need any school. I don’t need any classes, it’s just plain common sense.
I have a good number of people who left the company. They all came back, with the exception of one that I didn’t want to. Those are our best people today.
They know the value of the job with our company, they know what the grass looks on the other side, and they’re doing a terrific job.
Can you tell us a little about your life before you came to the United States?
Life is pretty short, you know? I was born in 1923, in Vienna, Austria. 1928, Hitler came in. Being Jewish, we got persecuted. I lost most of my family in the Holocaust. We were able to get out to Czechoslovakia. We came on an illegal transport from Czechoslovakia to Palestine.
In 1939, and with a pair of pants, with nothing, not knowing the language, I started learning to be an automobile mechanic. I did very good over there. Before I left, I had a garage with two partners, and when I started, I didn’t have nothing, didn’t have a roof overhead. We had to shower with a water hose outside.
I had a nice car, everything nice, but when I left I didn’t see my parents from 1938 until I came here in ‘53. But I had the experience. I know what it takes.
There have been times I was working four jobs.
I got married in 1948, it was still Palestine. I had both of my sons. Both of them were born in Israel.
But I tell you one thing, in my whole life, no matter how bad off I was, I’ve been able to work. I did not ever take any charity, any welfare, from anybody. Any time there was a job nobody wanted to do, I said, ‘you give it to me.’
Of course today, I’m not doing the time anymore like I used to, I haven’t got the physical strength like I used to, so it goes to the fourth generation, and they’re doing good. They’re still in the process to get experience, but I think the company has good prospects for the future.
Another secret is I’m very fortunate to have a wonderful wife.
Today I feel our company is well respected around the world. I think you take our company here in Jacksonville, we did a lot of good for the community. We help wherever we can, and I feel that is one of the biggest privileges we’ve had.
To me, life is a pleasure and I enjoy it, and it’s a privilege to be able to do it, and to be able to sit here and be 88 years old, to be able to smile and tell about it.