4 Publix Meat and Seafood Counter Requests Floridians Don’t Know They Can Make
Did you know that Publix’s seafood counter will special order fish for you?
These are the Publix meat and seafood counter requests Floridians don’t know they can make.
1. A Custom Cut or Trim
Publix’s meat counter takes on more than what’s already sitting behind the glass.
A shopper can ask for a steak cut to the thickness they want, or the fat trimmed off a roast before it heads home.
Publix’s example is an extra-thick New York strip.
That’s not the limit.
Publix names both of those, cutting to order and trimming, as part of what the counter does.
2. A Different Package Size
Publix’s meat counter doesn’t require a shopper to take home a cut in whatever size it’s already portioned in.
A shopper with a smaller household can ask to have a family pack repackaged into smaller packages.
That saves work at home.
Nobody has to re-wrap and freeze half a package before it goes to waste.
Repackaging sits on Publix’s list of meat counter services, next to custom cutting and trimming.
3. Free Seafood Steaming and Seasoning
A shopper can ask Publix’s seafood counter to steam and season a fresh catch before it ever reaches the checkout line.
Publix calls the service complimentary, its only counter service published with that word attached.
The seasonings are Lemon Pepper, Lemon Herb, Cajun, and Old Bay.
Some Publix stores may offer additional seasoning options.
It happens while you shop.
A shopper who skips the seasoning aisle at home still walks out with a flavored dinner.
The service covers a wide range of fresh fish and shellfish in Publix’s cases, from salmon to snow crab.
What’s Free at Publix’s Counters
Publix’s meat counter work, from custom cutting to repackaging, comes with no published price and no promise that it’s free.
Publix’s seafood steaming and seasoning service is the exception: The only service on either counter Publix has published as complimentary.
Publix’s pickup rules add a caution worth knowing: Some special instructions on an order can come with an extra charge in the store.
4. A Reel Variety Special Order
Publix’s Reel Variety special-order program brings in seafood that never sits in the everyday case.
The counter can bring in more than 60 additional fish varieties, cut to order as fillets, steaks, or select cuts.
Fresh salmon, haddock, monkfish, mahi-mahi, rockfish, and halibut are among the varieties Publix names.
An order can arrive at the store in as little as two days.
Not just fish.
Shellfish is on that same special-order list too, including shrimp, clams, crawfish, lobster, and mussels.
A shopper isn’t stuck with whatever’s already in the case, whether it’s a catch that never shows up there or someone just wants more for a boil.
A special occasion isn’t a requirement to ask.
Psst! How much do you know about Publix beyond its meat and seafood counter? Take our quiz and see how many you can get right.
Quiz
Publix Trivia Check
These go past the weekly ad and into Publix’s history and numbers. We bet you can’t get them all right. Prove us wrong?
What year did Publix open its very first store, in Winter Haven, Florida?
Sustainability Tiers at the Counter
Publix grades its seafood by how it was sourced.
The label sits right on the price tag at the full-service counter, not just on a shelf tag in the frozen aisle.
Responsibly Sourced is the entry-level tier.
Sustainably Sourced sits above it, and GreenWise Sustainably Sourced tops both.
Sustainably Sourced requires certification from a globally recognized program, such as Best Aquaculture Practices for farmed seafood or Alaska Responsible Fisheries Management for the wild catch.
The entry tier only needs a favorable stock rating from the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership, or a fishery improvement project already underway.
The standards weigh the fishery's stock, the gear used to catch it, and the effect on surrounding plant and animal life.
Not a taste test.
It says nothing about how recently the fish was caught, either.
Publix's labels reached the full-service counter and the frozen case together, in a rollout Grocery Dive reported in July 2019.
How Publix Tracks Its Seafood
Publix's sustainability push for seafood goes past a label on the price tag.
In 2024, Publix worked with Thai Union, the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership, and the traceability platform Wholechain on a pilot bringing universal fishery ID codes to crab meat.
The announcement said Publix would be the first supermarket to feature those codes on its crab meat packaging.
The pilot ran on a blue swimming crab fishery in the Philippines, with a rollout plan still to be announced.
Publix hasn't published confirmation that the codes have reached store shelves.
Publix also put $130,000 into Sustainable Fisheries Partnership improvement projects over the year leading up to June 2024.
That's not a marketing label.
The money funds better fishing practices at the source, and Publix hasn't attached a public timeline to when other seafood might get the same crab-style tracking.
The Never-Frozen Fresh Case
Publix says every fish in its fresh seafood case, including the salmon, has never been frozen.
Fish from that case can be ordered online for in-store pickup, ready in as little as two hours.
That case draws from named waters: Florida and Alaska for the domestic catch, plus Iceland and Chile.
Publix ties that sourcing to its alliances with the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership and the Global Sustainable Seafood Initiative.
Four names replace a guess.
Publix names those four sources on its site without narrowing which store gets which catch in a given week.
Grouper from Florida, cod from Iceland, and salmon from Chile are the examples Publix gives.
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The slowdowns rarely come down to bad luck. A few habits are easy to fix once a shopper knows to look for them.
9 Publix Self-Checkout Habits That Slow Down Every Line in Florida
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