Becca Millstein
Somewhere to run.
Fishwife’s Becca Millstein turned a pantry staple into a colorful business. Beyond the tins: long runs, food-world friendships and a life still connected to music.
By late afternoon, Becca Millstein is ready to run. Her route often takes her along the Arroyo Seco in Los Angeles, with a business podcast in her ears and the day’s unresolved questions still turning over. Eight miles, every day or every other day, gives the Fishwife cofounder a stretch of time outside the meetings. The work sometimes comes along. At least she is moving.
Before there were brightly illustrated seafood tins, there was music. Millstein grew up involved in the performing arts and graduated from Brown in 2016 with a degree in intellectual history. In Los Angeles, she worked in brand partnerships at a talent agency, then at a major record label and a smaller music startup. The creative world was familiar; running a food company was not yet the plan.
The startup gave her a close look at entrepreneurship. When the pandemic shut down the in-person activity at the heart of its business, her job changed abruptly. At home, she and her friend Caroline Goldfarb were eating tinned fish between video calls and trying to limit grocery trips. A shelf-stable lunch became something to think about more seriously.
She already knew another version of the category. While studying in Spain, she had encountered conservas and visited shops in Portugal where preserved seafood was something to browse and appreciate. A tin, bread, butter and olives could make a meal worth lingering over. Fishwife, which she cofounded with Goldfarb in 2020, brought that sense of pleasure to an American pantry.
The look mattered. Her early references included the familiar graphic punch of Topo Chico and Café Bustelo. Illustrator Danny Miller became a collaborator from the beginning. The resulting boxes give a small object the presence of something chosen: colorful enough to bring to a friend’s house, practical enough to open over the kitchen counter.
Making the promise repeatable has been harder than designing it. Six months after launch, Fishwife ran out of stock for two months. The company now works with six specialist canneries across Washington, Spain, Denmark and Scotland. Millstein describes sourcing as a process that includes certification standards and fishery improvement work; she also wants the company’s purchasing power to help sustain the people and skills behind hand-packed seafood.
The scale has changed. In April 2024, Fortune reported approximately $6 million in annual sales for the company. By October 2026, Mercury described a range of 16 products in more than 5,000 grocery locations. For a business built around discovery, the challenge is increasingly ordinary and demanding: getting the right tins onto shelves, then giving people a reason to buy them again.
Millstein learned early that national grocery expansion brings its own bills, from promotions to demonstrations and merchandising. A successful launch has to become steady movement through a store. Her route into food started with a shared appetite, but the business requires attention to what happens long after someone admires the packaging.
Some of the most natural connections still come through friendship. Jing Gao, the founder of Fly By Jing, is a close friend; their smoked salmon collaboration grew out of an early, spontaneous idea and became a lasting product. Millstein’s circle also includes other food founders. There is pleasure in seeing what someone else is making and finding a way to put the two things together.
She is an outdoors person, too, and has imagined packaging better suited to hikers and campers. A used tin and its remaining oil are awkward things to carry back out. It is a small design problem with an obvious personal origin. For all the styled spreads associated with the brand, her own end-of-day meal can be as simple as tuna and crackers.
The weekday has its systems. She starts early to catch colleagues on the East Coast, repeats familiar outfits and expects meetings to have agendas. Personal social apps have come off her phone. Those decisions reduce the number of small demands surrounding the larger ones.
At home, music remains close. Her husband, musician and comedian Pete Martin, who performs as Petey USA, cooks dinner while she finishes working. Afterward, there may be a walk or television on the couch. The company has taken her into canneries, grocery aisles and an entirely different industry. The evening still leaves room for a familiar person, a meal and another way to spend her attention.