The store had to be closed after police visited the premises and general manager Aaron Cooper said he had applied to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment [MBIE] about getting the doors open to allow one customer in at a time.
In the meantime, he was continuing to offer a delivery service to people’s homes, supplying supermarkets and exporting product — all of which are allowed as essential services.
Mr Cooper described his business as a "vertically integrated" food producer where "we control our fish from the moment we catch them to the moment our customer buys them".
"We’re here, we’re ready to go, we feel we’re operating within the safety standards that have been put out there — but we can’t open our store," he said.
They had a one-in, one-out rule, sanitisation, a 2m separation protocol from the counter as well as using contactless payments.
"MBIE needs to consider this when they review us," Mr Cooper said.
Mr Cooper was yet to hear back from Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment about his request as of yesterday morning.
A Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment spokesman said in a statement on Thursday businesses were expected to act in the interests of keeping people safe.
"To slow the spread of Covid-19, we need as many businesses as possible to close," he said.
Members of the public could report any businesses they suspected might be breaching the essential services rules to Police online at 105.police.govt.nz, the spokesman said.
"Police will take the information reported online and make contact to remind those breaching the restrictions of their responsibilities."
The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment would not say how many businesses in the South had been told by police to close, but it was advising officers about what defined an essential service.
Mr Cooper said because restaurants had been required to close down for the lockdown, he had lost 50% of his business and had applied for the wage subsidy scheme.
Harbour Fish had carried out other measures to continue as an essential service — such as reducing numbers of staff on factory floors by half and reducing the output of product from there.
Harbour Fish was working with other businesses trying to lobby the Government to let them open storefronts.
"I don’t want to be the squeaky wheel that’s whingeing because just my business is closed. Every business is shut.
"We feel when we can process the fish in our factories, we can send it to the supermarket, we can do everything bar run our retail, it seems."
There were a number of other companies delivering food around Dunedin.
Kaan’s Catering Supplies managing director Lindsay Kaan said his company started delivering hundreds of products to homes on Thursday.
"At this stage we’ve just opened it to certain areas of Dunedin until we can get ourselves sorted because it’s new for us to get our systems up to date."
It was doing deliveries to Kaikorai Valley, Roslyn, Mornington, Caversham, South Dunedin, Central Dunedin and Andersons Bay.
"Hopefully, by early next week we’ll open it up to the whole of Dunedin, Mosgiel, Port Chalmers area," Mr Kaan said.
If it continued to be a success, the company would look to delivering in parts of Canterbury.
Kaan’s delivers to hospitals and rest-homes so it was already classified as an essential food delivery service.
"Our [supply] is all fruit and vegetables, meats, dairy products, frozen foods, all your bakery items — I think there’s probably a couple thousand items we’ve got online."
The company was doing somewhere between 100 and 200 orders per day but there were some logistical issues it had to figure out, having not previously delivered to people’s front doors.
"We look at this as a social thing too. There’s a whole lot of people that ... can’t get out. Hopefully, that fills that gap of the elderly and all the vulnerable that can’t get out and can’t get deliveries."
Orders are usually with customers within about 48 hours.
Bidfood is another company delivering food to homes but its chief executive did not respond to a request for comment.
