Fresh fish and familiar faces behind the counter mark 50 years of Hill’s Quality Seafood

In an era where you can order dinner with the tap of a finger, or ask Google Maps to route you to the closest grocery store, Hill’s Quality Seafood’s old-school model is thriving.

The seafood company, which has served Delaware and Chester Counties since 1975, doesn’t use online ordering or delivery apps. Customers walk in and are greeted with sprawling displays of fresh seafood and accoutrements. They chat with the friendly face behind the counter, pick their catch, and head home, fish in hand.

“We value customer service,” said Alexandra Grogan, the president and CEO of Hill’s. “That’s really how Bernie was able to build the brand and the reputation.”

Bernie Grogan, Hill’s founder, was a top-notch fishmonger and scrappy businessman. He opened the first Hill’s location in Media in 1975 while a senior at Widener University. After his death in 2024, Alexandra, his daughter, took over the family business, now made up of four retail stores and a wholesale and warehousing operation.

Fifty years after Hill’s began serving customers in Media, Alexandra Grogan is carrying on her father’s legacy and helping bring a time-tested seafood counter into the future.

Alexandra Grogan said her father “grew up in seafood,” starting his career working for his uncle who owned Mainline Seafood in Ardmore. There, he learned the ins and outs of the business, from sweeping the floors to chatting with customers.

Bernie Grogan struck out on his own and opened the first Hill’s location at what is now Media’s Sterling Pig Brewery. Hill’s expanded to Newtown Square in 1980, then to Exton around a decade later. Bernie Grogan moved the Hill’s Media location to its current spot at Baltimore Avenue and Lemon Street in the early 1990s. Hill’s newest store — located in the old Wawa at Baltimore Pike and Brinton Lake Road in Glen Mills — opened in 2013.

For years, Bernie Grogan would drive into South Philadelphia to the city’s seafood markets each morning, pick up fish, bring it to his stores, filet it, clean it, and put it out for customers.

As the Hill’s retail stores were expanding, he saw a need to be strategic with the company’s supply chain. When an opportunity arose to purchase the Liberty Fish Building in South Philadelphia, he jumped at it. In 1994, Bernie Grogan opened Lawrence Street Seafood there, a wholesaler and warehouser that is now the sole supplier for the four Hill’s stores.

Lawrence Street Seafood has grown from a local wholesaler to a national distributor. It’s now the exclusive importer of Seachest products, a line of Indonesian blue swimming crab, Canadian lobster tails, lobster meat, Prince Edward Island mussels, and halibut.

In taking over the Liberty Fish Building, Alexandra Grogan said Hill’s has developed strong ties to vendors, allowing the company to know where, exactly, its fish is coming from. Hill’s sources its products from across the globe — salmon from Norway, cod from Iceland, clams from Virginia, crabmeat from Indonesia, and the list goes on.

A key component of the business is seeing familiar faces on the other side of the counter, Alexandra Grogan said. Some customers are the second or third generation in their family to shop at Hill’s, carrying with them memories of Bernie and the early Hill’s days.

“You get to know them over the years,” she said.

The pandemic only strengthened the Hill’s business. As restaurants shuttered, people turned to cooking at home and experimenting with seafood products they would have otherwise passed over in the grocery store. Hill’s converted to curbside pickup, maintaining their hands-on ethos from a safe distance.

“It’s a little two-sided, because I know how hard the pandemic was for a lot of restaurants and a lot of businesses,” Alexandra Grogan said. “But for us, it was an incredible opportunity to continue doing what we’re good at, and that is customer service.”

She said she didn’t intend to join the family business, but as she moved through college, the idea of carrying on the Hill’s legacy was “just kind of tugging at my heartstrings the whole time.”

After graduation, she started working at Hill’s.

“It’s a lot of pride to carry that forward and hopefully continue to honor him and the 50 years.”