End of Fish & Chips shops?

[Ifailed]

According to the BBC, some are facing a drop of 30% in custom and face 'extinction'. www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-62650572

Personally, I wouldn't buy a meal from one nowadays, a small haddock and chips costs £8.50, 1/4 of my weekly shop (live alone).

I know from previous threads they tend to be cheaper in the North of England, but even so all of them are having to pay more for oil, fish & spuds.

Have any closed down near you?

I had to queue for ten minutes the other day, admittedly in a touristy place. Cod & chips x 1, chips and beans x 1: £13.00.

We still have fish & chips but not as often as we used too. There are two in the nearest local village/small town one does a good trade the other has dwindled due to offering anything but fish & chips and closing it’s small side restaurant. Our local
chippy now charges more than we paid at the Norfolk coast a few weeks ago 😁madness.

Chips and gravy used to be about £2, I'd feel ripped off at £4.00.

i was told years ago by a fruend that owned a chip shop that it was a liscense to print money

not sure if that's still the case now though

£2.80 here, who on earth thinks £4 is a bargain!

Busy chip shops were historically a good business model because the gross profit (GP) on both the main product, chips, and the sundries (peas, gravy etc) was very high. Example : A 20 kg bag of spuds costs £10 & yields 40 portions sold @ £2.50 = £100. Factoring in £2 for oil, wrapping paper, S&V etc that gives a GP of £88. Similarly, a batch of mushy peas or gravy costs couple of quid to make & can be sold for £££.

Obviously, these are made up numbers and there are lots of other overheads (energy, wages, business rates etc etc ) but you get the gist.

Quite surprised no one has mentioned about delivery apps like deliveroo, Uber eats & just eat... surely taking some business away as there's so many more options now.. I'd usually choose something else over fish & chips these days!

I feel as though you could be describing exactly where I live. The local village’s chippy is well loved and shit, but the next village along’s chippy is ace

We don't have any of the delivery apps yet, we're in a market town, guess there's just not the demand.

We only ever buy them at the coast itself. It doesn't seem appropriate to us to buy them "inland"

Our main one changed hands.
He has another good business in town. He knows what he was doing I think.

Surely most people can't eat all the chips, anyway? Nobody in my house ever could, despite some big eaters and young men among us.

The portion of the chips in my local chip shop is tiny.
A large portion isn’t enough to feed a big eater.
This was my partners last week.
Thats a large fish & large chips apparently.

Could be the same place 😂
someone even complained on our local village fb page recently that they charge Michelin star prices for kid size portions 😂 and that they were still hungry.

We tend to only have F&C when we go away (we rent a UK seaside cottage at least once a year and probably have F&C twice during a week away)

We are in London though. Take aways are abundant and varied and F&C is just never something we choose at home.

@Christmasiscominghohoho this is a small at my local!
Can't remember how much but it was under £5 and the scraps are free

I maintain that Londoners don't know how to do fish n chips. I have lived in the capital and have been disappointed, repeatedly. Yet they charge £12-15 a portion. Utter rip off for soggy batter and pallid chips. I either make my own or go back to my home town in the Midlands to walk down memory lane. The chippy van is legend there, and so much cheaper at about £6 a portion. The owner runs out every night. If my local chippy in London closed down I honestly wouldn't miss it.

I rarely go to my nearest one now as they cut their hours during Covid restrictions which means that they shut before I get home from things like Scouts pick-up. I used to pick up a chippie as an easy option when getting home late so it's lost its point.

When I do go, I divert to the one that was friendly in the Covid years, not barking at you to shuffle 6" for social distancing 🙄

We tend to get two large portions to cover 2 adults & 2 children. That's about £15 now which is slightly eyewatering.

Owners of the best chippy in our town have sold it and are opening another one in a neighbouring town. Original one does very well and the new owners have kept the (family) name.

That’s a bargain for under a fiver. I think I pay £2 for the curry sauce alone here.

I might get fish and chips tonight from the village next to mine.

Compare the portion size pictures 😂

The one I usually go to has stopped doing haddock as apparently it costs too much now. Personally I won’t eat cod because of the parasite that lives in its flesh, bleugh. Tried some plaice instead and it was pretty bland so I don’t think I’ll be buying anytime soon. Shame as it was fairly reasonable price wise compared to some on here, around £8-9 per person.

We don’t have a good one nearby anyway. Dd does - we don’t use it often but I hope it won’t close.

I live rurally in SW and our local has a good reputation and is very busy. Another a little further away in Braunton had a queue out the door and lots of people picking up online orders, although a lot of their trade is tourists they still seem busy out of season.

I used to work at one a few years ago. To the outsider it looked like trade was good. Quite often had a queue outside the door. (Until 7pm then it went dead and only a handful of customers until closing)
Business was struggling then. Potatoes had risen in price, wholesale fish had gone up. Almost everything had gone up.
Everytime we had a price rise, even 5p customers would complain. We were told to cut down on portion sizes, which also encouraged complaints.
I won't be surprised if it closes soon and many others round here too as they're nearly all owned by the same family.

Ours has stopped doing delivery, the rise in utilities and petrol means it's no longer sustainable for them. A shame as it's a nice one and the only one that does gluten free around here. I can definitely see places like this closing down as people begin to cut back.