GIVE YOU A POUND FOR THAT…
Posted by Stelios Theocharous August 17, 2010 - 11:33 pm
As much as it pains me to say this I am a big fan of the golden arches, I really think that they have reinvented the fast food market a few times over and every time they bring out a new product that doesn’t end up working for them they end up selling more Big Mac’s. You have to give them credit with a huge worldwide recession, refurbishing all their stores and reducing their portion sizes they have still managed to increase their turnover and profit margin. I know after writing this everyone will more than likely hurl the proverbial at me and say how McDonalds is everything evil about today’s food industry, however… Wait for it… We need to learn from them… Yes you did read that right, we need to learn from McDonalds.
The whole world is facing food shortages, with populations growing, and the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India & China) nations growing wealthier every day people around the world have more money to eat more protein and foods that we have been neglecting in the ‘Wealthier’ countries. So at the moment Wheat & Corn is at the highest prices point they have been for a while, prices of fish fluctuate all the time and petrol & diesel is on the increase, this is a recipe for disaster and whether we like it or not the price of food is going UP!
As much as I believe fish and chips are the BEST take away food in the country, I believe that it also has a ceiling price. We have to accept that with prices going up we will have to pass this cost on to the consumer. We can only moan at our suppliers so much, but they still need to pass the price on and they should too as they have staff and overheads like any other business. So what choices do we have, I believe many people will be reluctant to put up prices, but fairly happy to swallow the increases and it will dent their margin, however this has serious implications. Like anyone in business if the margin is not worth working for, the passion and drive is not there to make a business succeed. No matter how much people love an idea or business no one will work for a pittance.
There is a solution to this problem, and it lies in the portion sizes that some fish and chip shops are serving 14oz ‘Fish’ for around £3.00 – £4.00 which works out at a ridiculously low amount of money to be asking for a piece of fish that a fisherman has nearly died getting for people to eat.
I really do think that some of the best fish and chip shops in the world are in Yorkshire, seriously there is so much choice of good fish and chips, but I also like the way they do their portions. In Yorkshire the average size for fish is around 6oz for a regular and the average price is £3.00 give or take.
Most people will say ‘oh well I can’t do this’, sooner or later people will have to keep putting up prices or they will be dropping portion sizes. Can you afford not to make the choice?
FISH AND CHIPS! STAND UP AND BE RECOGNISED!
Posted by Stelios Theocharous July 14, 2010 - 12:10 pm
See below for information.
I really do spend too much money on diesel and my mobile phone bill, for me they both go hand in hand. Once I am in the car and I have far to go I have a network of close people I can call and vent of some steam.
On this occasion I was talking to a good friend who was thinking about what will happen in January 2011 when the VAT goes up 2.5%. Although most fish and chip shops will pass the rise to customers we fully accept that some wont and will just take the hit on the margins, as we are an honest industry selling a fish which cannot be stretched to make it go further (lets say like you can a cow or chicken) we have to at some point bite the bullet and increase with the rate that the government set.
It doesn’t help when the media then publicize that certain supermarkets will be absorbing the increase, however what they don’t say is that they will possibly hold their supplier ransom or just put their prices up well before the vat rise so no one notices it.
Even so I sometimes hear from Jo Public that Fish & Chips is now an expensive meal and that it doesn’t represent good value for money. I would think that the national average of fish and chips is now around a fiver I thought it would be fair to compare this to some other foods.
Subway Foot Long Sandwich £4.40- £5.00
Local Indian Take Away: Chicken Tikka Masala £6.40 + Pilau Rice £2.00 + Plain Naan Bread £1.60 = Total £10.00
Local Chinese Take Away: BBQ Spare Ribe (starter) £4.00 + Sweet & Sour Chicken £4.50 + Egg Fried Rice £4.00 = Total £12.50
Dominoes Pizza: Large Pepperoni Pizza £14.99 + Chicken Wings £3.99 + Potato Wedges £3.49 = Total £22.47 (per person £5.62)
Local Cinema: Large Popcorn + Large Drink = £6.00
Just to make the point I really have no problem with any of those foods, these are the only ones I could find to hand. However people pay over £4 for a coffee from Starbucks, and over a fiver for a Big Mac meal from McDonald’s.
Fish & Chips is 150 years old and the media and the public need to learn to be proud of the national dish, the positive message needs to be sent out to consumers that most fish and chip shops make such a big impact on their local community and often than most they are the only companies that sponsor local teams. In comparison to the other foods I have mentioned fish and chips is by no means diet food, but is has a lower content of fat than the others.
The fish and chip shops I know go to huge extremes to make sure they source and prepare the best fish and chips. It may only be potatoes and fish but the potatoes vary from field to field and week to week and the prices fluctuate all the time, fish is getting harder and harder to get your hands on now and because fish and chip shops try and get the best responsibly caught fish, however it is usually easy to get bet now the prices will also creep up as the yanks are buying more because of the oil spill.
The fish and chip industry is possibly going to go through the same decline as the bakery and pub industry has gone through and it is up to customers to find the best fish and chip shop local to them, and remember freshly cooked is best and a fiver isn’t expensive. A fiver is just an average and I understand that it varies from London to Leeds, but ask your self this question if the fish is huge and doesn’t taste of much and the chips are squashed and soggy is that what fish and chips means to you?
Note to Fish & Chip Operators:
You need to start on a local level be confident and serve the best fish and chips you can possibly serve, don’t go crazy on your portions and protect that profit margin. A customer would rather have a reasonable portion of Fish & Chips cooked perfectly rather than a massive portion that ends up in the bin.
*Written by Mark Petrou, Image used with authors permission. Please follow this link for more information http://www.thebattercompany.co.uk/blog/fish-and-chips-a-national-treasure/
FISH AND CHIPS A NATIONAL TREASURE
Posted by Stelios Theocharous July 13, 2010 - 11:54 am
This is the first book that has given the public a real insight into the real Fish & Chip industry, with his unique easy approach in putting his story across.
Mark Petrou is no stranger to the industry he has won a long list of awards including national Fish & Chip Shop of the Year Award 2006 and has become one of our ambassadors of our great national dish.
Mark Petrou has been on National TV, National Radio all to give the positive message of Fish & Chips to the general public, and this is another milestone in the history of fish and chips which highlights a great future for Fish & Chips.
We thoroughly recommend this book to anyone who loves Fish & Chips, anyone who would like to know more about fish and chips and to those in the industry who have a passion for fish and chips.
For more information:
FISH & CHIPS – A NATIONAL TREASURE
By Mark Petrou
£9.99
*
Mark tells the story of the product itself, his personal background in the trade, some of his favourite shops, plus much much more.
This book has just been launched and is a must read for anyone in the trade. You can get hold of your copy by calling 01354 760057 during office hours and paying by credit card.
If you would like to order copies to sell in your shop to your customers, email us at chippychat@hotmail.co.uk with your requirements so that we can give you a wholesale price.
A limited amount have been printed so order your copies now to avoid disappointment.
BusinessWings.co.uk Podcast
Posted by Stelios Theocharous July 12, 2010 - 11:47 pm
Please follow this link to BusinessWings.co.uk to listen to an Interview with Stelios http://bit.ly/bvMDW6
SO YOU WANT TO OWN A FISH AND CHIP SHOP?
Posted by Stelios Theocharous July 9, 2010 - 11:36 pm
Please follow this link to read Stelios’s 1st instalment on the BusinessWings.co.uk business website.
http://bit.ly/b5KzGv
THE FUTURE? NEXT EXIT!
Posted by Stelios Theocharous July 7, 2010 - 1:58 pm
Fish and chips are now 150 years old, and it is amazing to see how far as an industry we have moved forward. There was a time when there were over 50,000 fish and chip shops in the United Kingdom and I am sure there was more than that tucked away in Betty’s front room serving up fish and chips from a coal fired range trying to make some extra money from the property they owned. Battered fish was more or less the equivalent of a pescatarian pasty, the batter was very thick and cooked within an inch of its life, however fish lovers would then peel off this shell and eat the fish from inside but then everything started to change, fish and chip shops have been on the change for a long time.
Over the course of the last 20 years most fish and chip shops have moved with the time and have even started using a thinner batter so that it can be eaten with the fish, and if done properly and is sealed accordingly it will cook with minimum oil penetrating the fish. However what will fish and chips be like in the next 50 years, how will we be celebrating on its 200th birthday?
There are a few questions to ask, will fish and chip shops reduce in number or increase? We know that from current trends a lot of people don’t want to purchase existing established fish and chip shops because they seem over priced, however instead people are choosing to open sites that were currently empty which is possibly adding to the already over saturated market place, however is this needed to weed out the bad or is it just going to add scrap bin of people who thought it was easy to open a chippy?
Will menus increase or will chippy owners start specialising in fish and chips rather than expand into a take away, I think this is a choice a lot of operators are now making. We will only see in a few years which of those choices actually work, will fish and chip shops succeed with limited but specialised menus and will customers prefer going to a fish and chip shop where they will pay more for a better product?
In the next 50 years we will see a lot of taxes and VAT increased on the fish and chip industry, historically VAT has never come down and I could imagine the government bodging up the economy a few more times in that 50 year period, so how we react as an industry in January 2011 is very important if people choose to absorb the VAT increase then it will create a larger gap in the industry and some shops will struggle to get their hands back on that profit lost.
I think that there is a catch 22 situation at the moment and a huge distrust within our industry; all fryers are there greatest allies and also their worst enemies. I am not suggesting that the local shops work together because that would be price fixing, but if everyone had a mutual respect for each other then they could all concentrate on making good profit and making great fish and chips, but I am not sure this is living in the real world.
As an industry we need to learn to be positive and confident, we cannot carry on absorbing all the hits that are put on us. I am not suggesting you go mental but be brave; no one wants to be a busy fool do they.
I have given you plenty of negative and positive scenarios and I am sure there is more on your mind; however I look forward to seeing your replies.
JOURNALISTS AND TOILET PAPER..
Posted by Stelios Theocharous June 30, 2010 - 7:22 am
I have been thinking about what to write for my blog now for the last couple of days, I had some really random ideas. However this morning there was a moment when I had a sign, a sign of a good idea and it was my phone buzzing off and there it was the rant on the other end of the phone which made me aware to a piece of toilet paper journalism that was written in the Sunday Times and it is something that has been printed in Fish & Chips & Fast Food trade magazine, So I set upon to do a little research and figure out what had been happening.
Don’t you just love the drama that some journo’s add to their articles it is all doom and gloom and some of them have absolutely no idea on the fish and chip industry but because we are a defenceless industry they may as well take a shot as no one will come back and say anything. I don’t want to focus on one article or one journalist, the truth is everyone loves to compare all of their food to fish and chips purely because a lot of the support and big money that the huge chains have is not available in the fish and chips industry.
The fish and chip shop sector has come a long way in the last 10 years or so, we are no longer your dirty little shop with poor lighting and awful greasy food. They are a network of 10,000 independent retailers; believe it or not they are a massive boost to the economy because they employ thousands of people. I am not going to come on here and say that all of those 10,000 fish and chip shops are the best and they all serve great fish and chips but the vast majority do sell great fish and chips and do care about the products they buy and sell. I took away a sample of fish, chips and peas from a fish and chip shop that uses our batter mix and the results came back that the fat content was 4.98% which falls well below the industry average.
The fish and chip shop industry has invested into high efficiency frying ranges and now using on average 30% less gas and more shops are taking on this technology so as a whole we will be frying better, we now fry at higher temperatures which means that the food is sealed quicker and does not boil at the bottom of the pan. The fish and chip shop industry uses three main types of frying mediums, Rapeseed Oil which is sourced from the UK, Sustainable Palm Oil which does not come from areas like Borneo which has been reduced to nothing and pillaged of anything worth having, and then Beef Dripping the traditional choice with low environmental impact.
Like I wrote a couple of blogs ago, our fish comes from a ‘responsible’ source, with fish coming frozen at sea from the Faroese fishing vessels and from the Barents sea, we are getting cod and haddock from ‘responsible’ fishing grounds, and we are massive advocates of keeping what has come out of the water instead of throwing it back in the sea for the seagulls to feast on.
Then there is the evil packaging that we see littered on all the streets of towns and rural villages, our industry is the only industry to move forward and start using card that can be recycled, paper from recycled sources and can be recycled and now a new technology which is packaging from sugar cane and it would have traditionally been thrown in the bin but it makes brilliant packaging and also is fully biodegradable, so by putting it in compost heap when finished that’s it voila..
What annoys me is when ignorant journalist, charities and organisations publish a stupid report without talking to the industry, there is plenty of people they can get the correct information from and to those in the industry let’s start standing shouting from the roof tops about the great efforts we go too and when we see negative journalism start sending some letters to counteract this, let the right people know and get on to our fish and chips networking sites and tell as many people as you can, there is support out there.
This is our national dish; we invented it 150 years ago and were re inventing it now.
FREE MARKET ECONOMY. REALLY?
Posted by Stelios Theocharous June 29, 2010 - 8:31 am
Written for Fish & Chips & Fast Food Magazine, June 2010
I get a little confused sometimes with business terminology and today I was thinking about the Free Market Economy. Definitions of the free market economy state that prices are set freely and are set by supply and demand. However it also states that government should have little interference.
Hypothetically every company should be able to set their prices regardless of government help and it should be an even playing field. There should be no advantages other than that the business which supplies a better product/service will be able to grow better and the business which does not offer such a good product/service will be less busy and will have to face the fact they are doing something wrong and should learn to get better. However I say “hypothetically” above because it is only hypothetical in the UK!
Imagine you’re at the London 2012 Olympics and Usain Bolt wins the 100m again, but the person who comes last also gets a gold medal because the organisers thought this was unfair for him to come last and not have a medal . There would be an uproar, I hear you say! Well, in this country, the government gives businesses that turnover less than £68,000 the benefit of not charging VAT. Granted there are not many fish and chip shops that turnover this amount, however is this supposed to be a FREE MARKET ECONOMY?
I don’t think so – because the government has taken it upon themselves to give businesses that needn’t charge VAT a 17.5% advantage, instead of having a fair policy that makes it fair for everyone to compete. This advantage increases the risk of people cooking the books to bring them under the threshold, and – to a degree – it is also stopping them from moving their businesses forward.
But do customers know about this? If – or should I say when? – there is a VAT increase with the next budget, then there will be an even bigger gap and customers will then think the shop that is cheaper is now 20% cheaper…it doesn’t make sense and you know it!
Currently we charge 17.5% VAT and there are rumours that they may up that another 2.5% to (a) catch up with Europe and (b) to fill that gaping black hole we call a government bank account. There are a number of items in the UK that you do not have to pay VAT on, for example books, magazine subscriptions, loans, newspapers and children’s clothes to name a few. Zero rated or exempt goods tend to include those things that everybody needs to buy in order to have a normal life. But hot food is not classed as a necessity, so VAT has to be charged on it at the standard rate.
However, as many of you will know, you do not have to pay VAT on hot food sold by the likes of Asda, Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Greggs Bakery. Although this list is not comprehensive, it covers most of those that are doing it, and they are possibly the ones that get away with the most. So how can they do it?
Well, to put it in a nutshell, the VAT legislation in this context is an ASS! It was created to make extra money for the coffers to get the country out of the last recession, and it worked. But it has always been a grey area – and the small businesses that cannot afford to clarify the legislation carry on charging VAT on the hot food they sell, whilst the big guns like the supermarkets and Greggs just carry on selling it ex-VAT. They say that because they do not try and keep the food hot and it is not intended to be eaten hot that they do not need to charge VAT. But in many cases it IS being eaten hot and again with the advantage of being ex-VAT.
So can someone please point out to me where our free market economy with little government interference is at the moment?
It begs the question can we live in a free market economy without government control? Without giving all the big companies tax breaks to employ hundreds of people and VAT breaks for being so big. Why can’t we put all businesses on a even playing field where we all pay the same rate of tax and VAT and the rest of it is left down to branding, PR and quality of food, service or product? It does make you wonder.
But what can be done? I am sure my friends and the National Federation of Fish Friers are reading this, and I have a new lease of respect for them (a little bit more, anyway!) because they seem to have pulled themselves out of the fire – and now they are all working together, it shows a positive relationship which should filter through to the rest of the industry.
I would think that if NFFF started an open campaign to find out exactly why there are such differences within the VAT sector, a campaign where they rally shops for their support, our industry would really welcome it. For once, we could all see what the NFFF is doing and then watch the member numbers rise! I would give support to such a campaign.
However, I must be clear, I’m not talking about abolishing VAT because there is more chance of me opening a chippy on the moon! But what we DO want is clarification on the VAT rules about hot food, particularly with the supermarkets and bakery chains. If the reason they don’t have to charge VAT IS because they don’t keep their food hot, maybe we should take a leaf out of their book. If we were to take out the thermostats for our heaters and only cook food fresh to go, without keeping it hot, then we would have conformed with the legislation.
But we’d need national backing initially to get the clarification we want and I really would like to see the NFFF get behind this to create an action plan.
How about it, Federation?
WANT ‘SUSTAINABLE’ FISH? ASK JESUS!
Posted by Stelios Theocharous June 23, 2010 - 3:53 pm
Jesus just before he fed the 5000
I think that there is evidence to suggest that fish has been fried since the roman times, if I owned a fish and chip shop in around the date 30AD I would get on my horse and ride the whole of the Roman Empire to find the man that fed around 5000 men, women and children with 5 loaves of bread and about 2 pieces of fish. That’s quite an impressive feat; no longer would I have to worry about paying the fish man, if I employed him I wouldn’t have to worry about how sustainable my fish was he made it come from thin air. That was one talented guy.
Roll on 1980 years to the year 2010 and we have government interference as to the best way to fish, and as more and more governments get involved the less clarity there is on fishing quotas. British fishermen say they get the raw end of the deal and the way the quota is set up the fishing boats they have to throw over any excess fish that exceeds the quota. So all of this fish that has been caught and then it has to be thrown in for the seagulls to eat, I suppose something has to enjoy it.
I don’t believe that the term ‘sustainable’ fish is acceptable; I strongly disagree with the term. I feel that it is a term to make us spend a little extra on fish although it is already quite expensive for cod and haddock from responsible sourced waters.
The problem is that too much commercial emphasis has been placed in telling the consumer in the supermarkets that their fish has come from sustainable sources, and whilst all this is happening fishing vessels have to dump fish in the sea, and the prices of fish fluctuates all the time because one moment there is too much fish and the next too little.
There are a number of steps that can be taken to make sure you buy from ‘sustainable’ sources, checking the boat and the areas that it was fishing in, however will you ever know how big the holes were in the netting? By making the holes bigger on the netting it is more likely that unsuitable smaller fish will slip through the netting and will have a bit longer to grow to the appropriate size.
Can you believe that organisations like Greenpeace are recommending to consumers to not visit local fishmongers and encouraging them to visit Waitrose and Marks and Spencer, to me this is absolute nonsense. The below organisations need to spend more time fixing our quota system and less influencing customers, they also need to make information about responsibly caught fish more accessible to fish and chip shops and all the catering and hospitality sector.
• Greenpeace
• Marine Conservation Society
• Frozen at Sea Fillets Association
• Seafish Industry Authority
• EU Fisheries Commission
• Marine Management Organisation
The conclusion is that no consumer has a clue, they trust a label on the packet of fish that may have no substance, the truth is that it is a expensive scheme to be a part of which means that fish from ‘sustainable’ sources is only available to the minority, where as if the legislation was changed to make every fishing vessel judge a fair amount of fishing but make them open the size of the nets and audit them regularly then the majority of the world can eat good quality caught fish from ‘responsible’ waters.
Unfortunately we don’t live in 30AD and with the population of the world growing at an unstoppable rate; with Asia getting wealthier we will have more pressure put on our fish stocks. The whole ‘sustainable’ programme is flawed from the get go, the more people that do choose to buy sustainable then more pressure will be put on the ‘sustainable’ scheme which will then defeat the object because they will need fish for more.
How many of you try and source ‘sustainable’ fish for your establishment or home?
Does Obama love Fish & Chips?
Posted by Stelios Theocharous June 16, 2010 - 2:35 pm
You cannot argue with Obama..
It is a little bit late to be writing about this, and it possibly doesn’t have too much to do with batter mix. However the BP oil spill has dominated much of the news, plenty of failed attempts to seal the leak, lots of negative publicity and a hacked twitter account which is poking lots of fun at BP and now like it could not get any worse Barack Obama has decided to condemn BP for the way they have dealt with the spill.
Barack Obama has now declared that the US should break its dependency on crude oil, and as you know the UK government always bang on about how the UK should be more Eco Friendly, but until they give us more carrot instead of constantly resorting to the stick in the form of fines then we will never learn to be a green country.
I am a firm believer that being green can start on a local level and more importantly at home and at your business. It does not cost too much to spend an extra few seconds separating packaging before throwing it in the bin. However if you find yourself spending too much time separating trash then the next step is watching what you buy in.
When designing our first bag for the Natural Batter Mix we were concerned about the packaging, and our biggest concern was what would happen to the paper bag once it was used. From start to finish in the design process we made sure that our paper came from recycled sources, it just made perfect common sense, we also had the option of adding a plastic lining between the 2ply paper but we decided against this as it we could not see how it could be recycled after the shop operator was finished with it. However it didn’t stop there our wheat is all sourced from the UK also, and milled and blended in the UK, Where ever we can everything we source is locally sourced.
However being green is not just about checking what packaging you buy, but it is also about sourcing your product responsibly and we have to accept that our fish catching process is a oil hungry process, however our potato sourcing is usually from local farms in the UK unless there is a serious problem at harvest time and we have to get foreign taters. However when it comes to sourcing batter mix, trays, paper packaging and most other items would it not be better and cheaper if you could source them locally. I believe firmly that if you call your suppliers and press them with these issues I am sure after a while and a few hundred calls later they will respond to your needs.
I am sure one day the government will use more carrot and less stick, and when they do the benefit to be greener will not just be on the PR but also on the pocket. However I also understand that as I develop a larger product range and our company grows if we have a green policy from day one then we will be doing our bit. Carrot or Stick it makes me feel better were doing the right thing, and we also open to suggestions so if you think we can cut down on waste anywhere we would love to know.
- received a fantastic nutritional report today from a user that uses beef dripping...
- Three more nutritional reports in the pipeline and a few being started next week too..
- Started in Walsall this morning, then to Mansfield, then to Leicester, then to Nuneaton, then to Rugby, Back... http://t.co/llXwcqY3
