Caviar, once a byproduct of American fishing, has transformed into a global luxury commodity. While increased supply, particularly from China, has lowered wholesale prices, consumer prices remain high due to perceived luxury status and marketing strategies that leverage this perception.
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After every broken fish egg is
meticulously picked out, premium caviar
from this California company will cost
up to $182 for just 1 ounce.
The most expensive from this company in
And the best from Madagascar will run
These prices are fairly standard for
premium caviar, no matter where it comes
from. For most of modern history, that
was simply because caviar was rare.
Demand outweighed supply, which drove
prices up. But over the last decade or
so, that balance has started to shift as
caviar from China floods the market.
>> The small purveyors and the small
producers can't survive. It's too hard
to compete with China with these other
imports. So, if we're talking simple
supply and demand, caviar should be
cheaper for consumers, right?
Not quite. Caviar seems to be everywhere
these days. But the prices consumers pay
haven't moved much. So, how did China
come to dominate the caviar industry?
And if there's more caviar on the market
Caviar wasn't always a luxury. To
American fishermen in the early 1800s,
it was literally garbage.
Demand here was nearly non-existent, and
supply, the rivers overflowed with
sturgeon. if it didn't end up in the
trash. Some bars in New York served
caviar sandwiches for free, like peanuts
as a salty snack to encourage beer
sales. Meanwhile, European diners
treated caviar as a delicacy, and paid
premium prices for it. By the 1870s and
80s, one New Jersey town aptly named
caviar, produced more caviar than any
other place in the world.
This was the golden age of American caviar.
caviar.
But it wouldn't last. Fishermen
harvested millions of pounds of sturgeon
with few restrictions and populations
plummeted. As sturgeon became less
abundant, prices climbed.
In 1885, American sturgeon row cost the
equivalent of $300 to $400 per 135 lb
keg. Just 15 years later, a keg of
caviar cost around $4,000.
Wild sturgeon continued to dwindle
Finally, in 2006, the Convention on
International Trade and Endangered
Species of Wild fauna and flora
effectively banned the trade of
wildcaugh caviar worldwide.
global supply shrank even further,
pushing prices higher and deepening
Caviar's luxury status. It's an almost
textbook example of an economic idea
called the rarity value thesis.
Basically, the less of something there
is, the more valuable it becomes.
But there has to be some supply. So,
with traditional sources strained,
producers had to figure something else
out. What happened instead was people
started to farm caviar which wasn't
really done before to this extent.
Generally farmed caviar is worth much
less than wild because of that rarity
value thing. But after the 2006 ban,
farmed caviar became a necessity.
Producers now needed to build their own
infrastructure and care for the animals
for years before they could make a
profit. At many farms, tanks have to be
constantly flushed with fresh oxygenated
water. Some are built into natural
bodies of water, like at Asipensor in
Madagascar. The team spent months
finding a lake cool enough to mimic the
Sturgeon are slow, expensive animals to
grow. Depending on the species, it can
take a decade before the fish are mature
enough to harvest their eggs, and they
need to be fed the whole time.
Asapens spends over $130,000
a month on feed alone for about 60,000 fish.
fish.
Traditionally, sturgeon are killed to
harvest their eggs, so it's usually one
But some farms have started producing no
kill caviar where they basically induce
labor and then gently massage the eggs
out. That process can be repeated every
15 months or so.
The rise of farmed caviar, especially
from China, ultimately caused a surge in
supply, driving down wholesale prices.
The wholesale price is what producers
charge restaurants, distributors, and
other retailers to buy their products in
bulk, and it's usually lower than the
retail price. That's the one customers
pay. China now exports over 40% of the
global market. So, how has China
skyrocketed to global industry dominance
in such a short time?
In the 1990s, China began investing
heavily in sturgeon aquaculture,
building large inland farms using
recirculating water systems.
They were controlled, scalable, and
designed for long-term production.
>> They are farming mass amounts of caviar.
And that caviar is, or it can be a lot
cheaper than traditional caviar. Quality
improved quickly and by the mid2010s,
Chinese caviar was showing up in
Scale is what changed everything. UN
trade data shows China went from a
negligible exporter in 2006 to the
dominant supplier by 2019.
>> In 2024, China exported 322 tons of
caviar. That's double the amount of
caviar it exported in 2019. So why can't
other countries scale to compete?
>> The government has really invested in
that industry. So they are putting money
into the farms. There is really cheap
labor in China that is not available in
America or in Italy. And so it's really
reshaped the dynamics and the pricing of
the market. Um in addition to just a
huge boatload more of caviar entering
the market. That surge in supply had a
ripple effect across the global
industry. Wholesale prices fell in some
markets by more than 40% in less than a
decade. Between 2014 and 2020, the EU
reported that the average price of
caviar fell from about €413 per kilo to 241.
241.
But lower wholesale prices didn't drop
the prices for consumers in the way we
might expect.
What it did do was reshape the way
caviar is marketed, presented, and experienced.
experienced.
On the one hand, you have restaurants
that are buying caviar cheaper, but
selling it for roughly what they
normally would because people expect it
to be expensive. Then you have
restaurants following a new playbook.
Our restaurant has the best deal for
caviar. Using wholesale caviar as a
marketing tool, especially on social
media. In both cases, retailers rely on
customers feeling that caviar is a
luxury good. Perception, not scarcity,
is what keeps caviar so expensive.
>> It's going viral on Tik Tok and
Instagram. Caviar Talk is filled with
creators from all social stratospheres
eating and engaging with Caviar. They
create aspirational content that
leverages Caviar's luxury status while
at the same time making it feel
The modern in New York is one restaurant
fueling the trend. Chef Thomas Allen has
taken the little luxury route. Do I make
a ton of money off the caviar hot dogs? No.
No.
>> That's by design. The Modern sells two
mini hot dogs topped with caviar for
$39. Tom wouldn't tell us exactly how
much they're marked up, but he assured
us the margins were slim.
>> I want you to have the caviar hot dogs,
so I'm not going to put them at a price
that's going to intimidate you or make
you feel like you're boxed out of of
enjoying something that I think is
really unique and really special. Once
diners are in the door, Tom says the
goal is that they'll order other higher
margin items on the menu that aren't
necessarily engineered with social media
in mind. Viral or otherwise, these hot
dogs are prepared with just as much
precision as any other dish from a two
Michelin starred restaurant.
>> We're going to make the bread. We're
going to make the sauce. We're going to
make our mustard. We're going to pickle
our shallots. We're going to do all the
things we can do to to perfect in a
consistent way the things that we have
control over. We toast it on both sides
so it's warm and crispy. First goes a
sauce made with fried eggs and mustard.
And then we put our hot dog right on top
and a big spoonful of caviar.
>> The modern uses Chinese caviar on its dogs.
dogs.
>> When people say Chinese caviar, the
assumption is that it's cheaper or it's
lesser quality. Caviar is still
expensive for me.
>> For Tom, the goal isn't to cheapen
caviar. It's to reframe luxury. Keep the
prestige. remove the intimidation.
To see how the dish plays with everyday
diners, we sent two Business Insider
reporters to the modern.
>> I have had caviar, I think, once in my life.
life.
>> I had it once at a wedding, but I don't
remember it.
>> Dishes like this are meant to be an
entry point for the diner and their followers.
followers.
>> Oh my god, the brininess that I was kind
of scared of. So good.
The saltiness of the caviar cuts the
smokiness of the hot dog.
It works really well. It's such an
interesting combination.
I feel like my brain is saying no, but
then like my taste buds are like I want more.
more.
>> Have you seen the thing of people
putting caviar on like Pringles and
things like that? Like I love the kind
of high low.
>> That's what I'm saying. It feels
counterintuitive in a kind of funny way.
>> Can I have like 12 more
>> to go? Perhaps
>> those who are uh concerned about caviar
losing its status uh because I put it on
a hot dog haven't tried the caviar hot dog.
dog.
>> Chef Tom's strategy only works as long
as caviar still feels special.
>> Working in fine dining, especially New
York City, caviar is a pretty essential
part of who we are. It's a luxury
ingredient and a restaurant like ours
needs to have luxury ingredients. While
many restaurants have adapted to the
changing caviar landscape, some small
producers face a much tougher path. With
more caviar on the market, they're
feeling pressure to lower their
wholesale prices to compete. But small
farms like California Caviar Company say
they can't afford to lower their prices
because running a sturgeon farm is
simply too expensive.
We are a artisal caviar reaching a very
elite group of people. So we don't play
the price game. California Caviar
Company can't compete with volume.
Instead, it focuses on quality. The
process of getting premium caviar from
the farm to your mother of pearl spoon
is labor intensive, meticulous, and expensive.
expensive.
So, the eggs come in on ice. Each bag is
labeled to match the fish. This is a
sturgeon's ovary. To separate it from
its eggs, Deb rubs it through a screen.
Every single egg is taken off by hand.
This step may look simple, but it takes
a bit of finesse.
She doesn't want to push too hard. The
more we push through the screen, the
more picking we're doing, the longer the
screening, and then it really breaks
down caviar.
By picking, she means picking out the
duds. Bad eggs are removed at every
stage of processing, but the goal is to
retain as many as possible. We want to
save the eggs cuz each egg is, you know,
$3 a piece. After separating the eggs
from the ovary, they get washed. It
still has a lot of ovarium fluid, but
the minute we rinse it, the clock starts
ticking and it starts to break down.
Rinsing removes all the gunk that
reminds you that caviar is an animal product.
product.
>> Sometimes the water will be gray, white,
pink, red, and we want the water to be
completely clear by the time we're done.
So, after we've gone through the
screening and the ro washing and
rinsing, this is where we dry them a
little bit, get off the excess water and
pull out any of the broken eggs
or any tissues that snuck through. It
looks like a little shell. And so now
we'll salt her.
And I continue to pick as I go. You want
to salt it evenly so you don't have one
hot spot with too much salt
in in one area.
And you just want to fold it in.
Some people use their hands.
I find that it just warms the caviar too much.
much.
Caviar hates temperature.
She'll fold until all the salt is
dissolved and her instincts kick in.
Just feel it. you know, when it's done,
it's not done.
And the caviar tends to
almost push back. Right now, they're
like little beads against my
uh spoon. And now it's be it starts to
move like one.
It's really shiny, though. It looks
great. She's happy. After a taste test
to check the salt level, Deb lets the
caviar dry for a spell before packaging.
So, you want to pack it down, get the
and then at the end to make sure the air
is out,
you can tap it. And then they'll clean these,
clean the tins, label the tins, and have every
every jar
jar
in tin that will match the paperwork
back to the fish to the farm in the day
of the harvest.
And so we wonder why is it so expensive?
It's because it's a lot of work. With
small producers in the market alongside
bigger ones, a tiered caviar system has emerged.
emerged.
>> It's like the wine world. It caviar is
here to stay. Take champagne for example.
example.
Luxury champagne can start around $150,
but mid and low tier sparkling wines
have expanded the market without eroding
champagne status as a luxury good. Small
batch Americanmade caviar will likely
always command a premium, the same way
sparkling wine from the champagne region
of France will. Has champagne lost its prestige?
prestige?
And the answer is no. You're going to
have the thousand dollar bottles of
champagne for those very special events
and then you're going to have sparkling
wine. Caviar at scale dominates the
middle of the market while smaller
producers survive by leaning harder into
that top tier. That's California caviar
company's bread and butter. But it also
engages with the entry-level market by
offering fish egg products that aren't
technically caviar. An ounce of row
starts at $8.
>> Yes. Are we still indulging on $100
jars, 1 oz jars of cavi? Yes. But what
you're starting to see are more rows
popping up in different ways to
integrate it.
>> Deb doesn't expect every producer will
be able to find a way to engage with the
changing market.
>> You will see a consolidation because the
small purveyors and the small producers
can't survive. It's too hard to compete
with China, with these other imports.
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