Main Stage | Small World Seafood

With the help of a software designer, a Square agency partner, and Square Online, Robert Amar was able to pivot from a wholesale seafood distributor to direct-to-consumer seafood sales during the restaurant closures and restrictions of 2020.

Learn how Robert started Small World Seafood with his Philadelphia neighbors, set up his Square Online site with help from Square agency partner Scope, and caught a loyal customer base hungry for fresh fish.

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Robert: To get fresh fish in front of people is really exciting.

What I love the most about seafood is the variety, the flavors, the seasons, the areas things come from.

On March 16, 2020, when the city shut down, I had seafood. I emailed my block and I said: “Hey listen, I’ve got all this seafood here. And it’s free. Come by tomorrow and pick it up.”

We pivoted from being wholesalers to going right to people. In hindsight, you know, we’re geniuses.

But the reality is me and Andy just hopped on a raft that was racing by on this rapid river, and we were just trying to figure out how to survive on it.

As we’re growing we’re still doing things on pen and pencil. We couldn’t verify who was even paying at some point.

So we needed to look for options, and that’s when we found Dylan and Square.

Dylan: Working with Robert was really personal because we both were from Philly. My name is Dylan Mullan, and I helped Small World Seafood launch their Square Online site.

The solution I proposed was to design a website that had all the information on his pickups, his delivery times.

It had his ever-changing menu so he could update it daily, based on his current selection. So the influx of orders that he gets are much more organized.

He can collect payment immediately.

Robert: Once we pull our truck up to a location, we needed something that we can look at and go, “Boom! This is what we need. This is how much we have to sell.”

That was really, really helpful.

Dylan: I love building with Square because I get to help small businesses like Robert’s grow.

Robert: COVID-19,you know, it brought a lot of us together. We started to spend more time with the people that we really cared about.