Times are tougher in the fish and chips business.
The cost of the raw ingredients is rising and, in these cosmopolitan times, competition on the high street is fierce.
Nevertheless, fish and chip shops are still the most popular form of takeaway in the UK, and are undergoing something of a renaissance. Despite the profusion of alternative choices, people still regularly opt for this old British favourite. It certainly helps that fish is one of the most nutritionally important foods.
Fish and chips at £5 per portion are still cheaper, when compared to today’s average weekly wage, against its cost and wage comparison of 10 years ago
Mark Petrou, fish & chip shop owner
The resurgence of fish and chips is even more remarkable given rising prices in the industry. It used to be a cheap option, but with fish stocks dwindling, the price of vegetable oil rising and potato prices volatile, fish and chip shop owners are being forced to pass costs onto customers.
Great value
But Mark Petrou, whose Cambridgeshire fish and chip shop was named the best of 2006 by the industry body Seafish, thinks that fish and chips offer great value, despite breaking the £5 barrier in parts of the south-east.
“When you consider the journey from field or sea to plate, and the level of skill involved at every stage of that journey, including the risk to human life and nurturing, storage, transportation, preparation, cooking and serving — with every pair of hands along the way demanding a piece of silver — and then compare it to a bag of popcorn from the cinema at £4, then I can already rest my case,” he says on his blog On Plate, although he doesn’t stop there.
“Fish and chips at £5 per portion are still cheaper, when compared to today’s average weekly wage, against its cost and wage comparison of 10 years ago. Pubs charge up to £14.99 for a poor imitation of our product and nobody bats an eyelid.”
It’s a fair point, although fish and chips are still pricier than a meal from McDonald’s or Burger King. But then again, fish and chip shops outnumber McDonald’s outlets eight to one, with 11,000 fish and chip shops in the UK selling approximately 300 million meals every year, according to figures from the National Federation of Fish Friers.
Fish and chip shops supplement their staple with various budget options, including fishcakes and scampi for fish lovers; pies, sausages, burgers and kebabs for the post-pub market; and, increasingly, salads, falafel and other healthy and vegetarian options. Nevertheless, chippies concentrate on promoting their core meal of white fish and chunky chips, partly because buying the ingredients in bulk means they can keep prices lower.
The origins of the meal go back to the industrial revolution when the newly constructed rail links allowed fish and imported foods to be shipped quickly from ports to towns, enabling a rapidly growing population to be fed cheaply. It went on to become such a well-loved part of the national diet that ‘fish ‘n’ chip’ shops sprang up in seaside resorts from Whitby to Bournemouth to cater for the then new-fangled tastes of holidaying city dwellers.
Shops in such towns remain among the most lucrative and expensive in the country. Many day trippers see fish and chips as being as integral to a seaside trip as seeing the beachfront itself.
