Gorton's of Gloucester
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| Subsidiary | |
| Industry | Food processing |
| Founded | 1849 |
| Headquarters | Gloucester, Massachusetts, United States |
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Key people
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Judson Reis, CEO |
| Products | Frozen seafood |
| Parent | Nippon Suisan Kaisha |
| Website | http://www.gortons.com/ |
Gorton’s of Gloucester is a subsidiary of the Japanese seafood conglomerate Nippon Suisan Kaisha, Ltd., producing fishsticks and other frozen seafood for the retail market in the United States. Gorton’s also has a North American food service business which sells to fast-food restaurants such as McDonald’s, and an industrial coating ingredients operation. It has been headquartered in Gloucester, Massachusetts, since 1849.
The company traces its roots to a fishery called John Pew & Sons. William Pew, son of John Pew, picked up fishing after serving as a Colonial soldier in the French and Indian War. While most people moved West after the war, Pew turned eastward and arrived in Gloucester, Massachusetts, in 1755. The father-and-son fishery business emerged as an official commercial company, John Pew & Sons, in 1849.
When nearby Rockport’s chief industry, the Annisquam Cotton Mill, burned down, Slade Gorton, the mill’s superintendent, was out of a job. At his wife’s urging, he began a fishing business in 1874 known as Slade Gorton & Company, and began to pack and sell salt codfish and mackerel in small kegs. This company was the first to package salt-dried fish in barrels. In 1899, the company patented the “Original Gorton Fish Cake.” In 1905, the Slade Gorton Company adopted the fisherman at the helm of a schooner (the “Man at the Wheel”) as the company trademark. Today, he is known as the Gorton’s Fisherman.
In 1906, Slade Gorton & Company and John Pew & Sons and two other Gloucester fisheries merged into the Gorton-Pew Fisheries. They made Gorton’s codfish cakes a household name in New England. The company offices were located at 372 Main Street, Gloucester, in the same building where Gorton’s Main Office is located today.
The company went into the fish-freezing business in the early 1930s. In 1949, Gorton-Pew made headlines when it drove the first refrigerator trailer truck shipment of frozen fish from Gloucester, Massachusetts, to San Francisco, California – a trip that took eight days. In 1953, the company was the first to introduce a frozen ready-to-cook fish stick, Gorton’s Fish Sticks, which won the Parents Magazine Seal of Approval.
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Wikipedia