Juneau, Alaska, literally sits at the edge of the world. Cascading mountains plummet into the ocean, glaciers loom over a dense coastal rainforest, and the city has no roads connecting it to the rest of Alaska, much less the United States.
To get in or out requires a boat or a plane because Juneau does not have road access due to its rugged terrain. For most businesses, that kind of isolation is a dealbreaker. For Matt Kern, co-owner of Barnacle Foods, it was simply the place he called home.
Matt and his wife, Lia Heifetz, along with Lia’s childhood friend, Max Stanley, launched and built a thriving business making tasty products using kelp, a crunchy seaweed packed with vitamins. They had been harvesting kelp from the Alaskan coast for years, using it to make kelp salsa, pickles, and hot sauces in their kitchen. When they brought their products to a local holiday market for the first time in 2016, they sold out their entire inventory on the first day of the multi-day event.
“We literally had no idea if anyone would buy kelp salsa because it had never been tried before,” Matt recalled. “We were blown away to sell every single jar.”
The community wanted more. The problem was getting it to them, and eventually, to the rest of the country.
Matt and Lia knew from the beginning they wanted to build a national brand, sharing Alaska’s coastal flavors with the world. But the geography was challenging. Every pallet of hot sauce or chili crisp leaving their 6,000-square-foot Juneau facility had to travel by barge or air before it could reach the continental U.S. Delayed shipments, lost packages, and broken glass jars were consistent problems. Shipping individual orders directly to customers across the country was expensive, slow, and logistically exhausting.
“Being in Alaska means that anything we are shipping into our facility is going to have an added cost, and everything we ship out has an added cost,” Matt said. “We really need to be efficient with our operations.”
That’s when the team started exploring Amazon as a sales channel that could expand their reach and help with fulfillment. When Barnacle started selling their products in the Amazon store in 2019, they started with Fulfillment by Merchant (FBM), which allowed them to pack and ship every order themselves from Juneau. As orders grew, the model became unsustainable. The team was spending precious time on order fulfillment instead of production, innovation, and marketing.
They switched to Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), so instead of packing individual orders and navigating Alaska’s complex shipping infrastructure, Barnacle could load a single large pallet and ship it to an Amazon fulfillment center. From there, Amazon handled picking, packing, shipping, and customer service.
“That really allowed us to let Amazon handle the fulfillment side, and for us to focus on production and marketing,” Matt explained. “We saw an immediate uptick in sales as soon as we switched.”
As Barnacle’s Amazon sales grew year over year, a new challenge emerged: keeping up with demand during peak seasons. The holiday gifting season, in particular, created massive inventory surges. To solve this, Barnacle started using Amazon Warehousing and Distribution (AWD), which allows them to send even larger bulk shipments that are automatically redistributed to Amazon fulfillment centers across the country.
“We’re able to increase our inventory and increase our sales,” Matt said. “We didn’t have to worry about selling out at any point.”
Today, Amazon represents 10-20 percent of Barnacle’s total revenue, and sales have grown annually since 2019. In addition, they’re producing more than 30 different kelp-based products.
“When we started Barnacle, it really felt like a leap of faith,” Matt reflected. “What I’m most proud of is that we’ve maintained and grown our operations now for 10 years, and we’re working our way towards meeting our original goal of being a nationwide brand, and sharing the flavors of Alaska with the world.”
In addition to their early focus on becoming a national brand, job creation was always central to Barnacle’s mission. “Creating jobs is one of the biggest reasons we started Barnacle,” Matt said. The company now employs 15 full-time, year-round workers in Juneau. This is meaningful given how in this tight-knit community, seasonal employment is the norm for many. Barnacle’s facility operates year-round, processing fresh kelp in batches of up to 10,000 pounds at a time and freezing it for consistent production across seasons.
The company sources kelp from farms across Alaska and along the U.S. East Coast, directly supporting independent kelp farmers and the emerging domestic seaweed industry. As Barnacle grows, so does its ability to bring more of those farming partners into its supply chain.
“Our goals for the future are to continue to grow and help expand our mission by supporting more kelp farmers and Alaskan suppliers, and connecting that incredible, authentic Alaskan quality food with people all across the planet,” Matt said.
Barnacle Foods’ connection to Alaska runs deeper than geography. The company is partly owned by Sealaska, an indigenous regional corporation, ensuring that Barnacle’s business success is shared with indigenous communities across Southeast Alaska. Every product that ships from their Juneau facility includes a land acknowledgment recognizing the Tlingit, Tsimshian, and Haida peoples as the original stewards of the land where Barnacle operates.
Each year on Indigenous People’s Day, Barnacle runs a special sale and donates a portion of proceeds to indigenous organizations. Barnacle has also donated to more than 50 organizations across Alaska in the past year, with products appearing at silent auctions statewide and a portion of sales directed to local nonprofits during select campaigns.
“Anytime someone in the community or across the state of Alaska comes to us, we are happy to provide a donation,” Matt said. “We’re proud to be able to give back in that way and support numerous organizations across the state.”