Gezellig Seafoods and European Groceries occupies a crevice on Commercial Street.

One side of the single-aisle shop is lined with display refrigerators and freezers with rotating seafood, the other with snack foods from across Europe. The back of the shop holds a small kitchen to prepare soups and sandwiches for the lunch crowd and materials to vacuum seal and package fresh-caught seafood for fishermen who don’t want to haul it themselves.

Like the building it calls home, the new business fills a gap in the local market that owner Amanda Cordero noticed when working at the West Mooring Basin for 13 years.

At Northwest Wild Products, she saw good frozen fish that wasn’t displayed or poised to sell when people inquired. She saw fishermen asking for packing services that were nowhere to be found. These opportunities sat in the back of her mind throughout her time there.

When COVID-19 hit, she moved to Holland with her partner and fell in love with the grocery stores.

“They’ve got the best food products, the best snacks, the best cookies, the best sauces, all that kind of stuff,” she said.

After a while, she got homesick. When she moved back to Astoria, she found her old business partner from the West Mooring Basin was using the space that is now Gezellig as storage.

“I just thought that was such a waste, having just a warehouse on Commercial Street,” Cordero said.

She took all of her observations and put them into a diversified business, which opened up in April without much fanfare. Cordero said she didn’t put up a sign to mark the business until June. Still, people found their way in.

Gezellig, pronounced “heh-sell-ick,” is a Dutch word for a feeling of warmth, comfort and relaxation, according to a sign hung in the shop.

“That’s the kind of business I want,” Cordero said.

The European goods have helped connect with Astoria’s Scandinavian history. Cordero’s goods are primarily Dutch, but she is looking to expand and is always open to suggestions.

“I think one of my highlights working in the shop was when the great-grandson of Douwe Egberts stopped in,” Cordero said. “Douwe Egberts is the most famous coffee in the Netherlands, so this really illustrated what a small world we live in.”

She runs the shop herself in addition to two other jobs — waitressing at El Tapatio and bookkeeping for Northwest Wild Products. She has simple systems to make running the place easier.

She gets small amounts of fresh seafood every few days based on requests or personal whim. What she doesn’t sell, she freezes, giving her good quality frozen products.

She orders European groceries from her business partner in Holland and tries to follow trends. Right now, people are really into licorice, and Cordero has a whole corner with different flavors and textures.

She does her bookkeeping work from the shop in the evenings, which helps her stay open for what she calls the “after-dinner walkers.”

She’s hoping the seafood packing will bring business in prime fishing times and, when it gets colder, unique European goods will bring in holiday shoppers.

“You’ve got to be diversified, right?” she said. “If you’re relying on one thing, unless it’s something really amazing, you’re not going to make it.”