SHOP WATCH Ken's Traditional Fish & Chips, Wroxham, Norfolk

All is revealed

When I interviewed Ken Eadon of Ken’s Traditional Fish and Chips back in April (p44&45) he hinted that there were some major changes afoot at his Wroxham shop in the heart of the Norfolk Broads. So when I was invited to attend a staff meeting, I was intrigued and excited at what I might find.
On arriving at the shop I was greeted by a closed sign, a gentleman giving the shopfront a fresh lick of paint and, much to my frustration, windows covered over obscuring the view inside. As my curiosity grew, I joined the other staff members on the decking out the back, and it soon became apparent that I was not the only one in the dark. All Ken’s staff had just returned from a week’s paid leave and were none the wiser.
Then Ken entered looking as calm and in control as he did the first time I met him. “So what’s this all about?” Ken remarks. Good question I was thinking. “Well some of it’s about me, some of it’s about fish and chips and some of it’s about this building,” he continued. “It’s the oldest building in Wroxham and it’s like a magnet. People come from all over to see this village and to eat our fish and chips, so I wanted to make it special. While Wroxham is the heart of the Norfolk Broads, this is the heart of Wroxham and with a strong heart the rest of it carries on.”
As we followed Ken through the 28 seater restaurant and into the takeaway, the mystery was finally revealed as Ken pulled the cover off a brand new three pan high efficiency counter range, complete with curved front panel and striking green LED lighting.
“It’s going to have a huge impact on the waiting time in the restaurant,” says an excited Ken, who estimates it will shave off 15 minutes per order, halving waiting time from 30 to 15 minutes.
Ken saw the range at this year’s Fry Fast Food Show in Coventry and placed an order there and then, even though it wasn’t a range he was looking for. “We went along to the exhibition expecting to see Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s Fish Fight team, but when we saw this on the Fryline (www.fryline.co.uk) stand I fell in love with it instantly. It’s exactly what I’ve spent 14 years looking for, as I’ve never been able to get the capacity out that I’ve wanted to do. But now I can.”
The range was custom built for the shop, which is wider at the back than it is at the front, and which doesn’t have a single straight wall in it. It features two chip boxes, a scrap box and three Maxi Pans, which are considerably larger than conventional pans and are capable of frying 20lbs of chips or 22 pieces of fish at a time. This is a vast improvement on the 13 pieces of fish the  pans in the previous range could manage.
“I’ve got the equivalent capacity of a four and a half pan range in three,” Ken adds. “It’s a lot faster, the burn rate is a lot better and all the controls are computerised. I feel like we’ve gone from a carthorse to a thoroughbred race horse.”
As well as having the extra capacity, the new configuration of the range is proving beneficial to the shop, ensuring it runs more smoothly. With the range in the centre of the shop, it serviced not only the takeaway but also the restaurant. Waiting staff would often trip up the serving staff as they battled for fish and chips. But now the servery has been moved to the entrance of the shop and there’s a dedicated chip box at either end of the range. “The counter staff and restaurant staff now get their chips from different sides, so there’s not that bottleneck that there was before.”
The range is huge and there’s no denying the fact that on the customer side, space is tight, but for the staff it’s a vast improvement. Even the working height of the range is having a positive effect as it’s improving the posture of employees and alleviating backache.
So why did Ken keep everyone in the dark about the shop’s new range? “Well there are three reasons,” says Ken. “Firstly, I didn’t want my nosey neighbours to get wind of it, secondly it took a huge amount of planning and working out to get it right, and thirdly, we knew we would have a huge amount of fun by throwing the staff a few red herrings!”
And fun is something that this shop is not short of. “We have a laugh here and it spills over to the customers who enjoy coming here,” says Ken. “After all, we’re not just a fish and chip shop, we’re also a place of education. We get school leavers come here to work who get to interact with people of all ages and walks of life, they learn how to conduct themselves and how to handle different situations, for example disgruntled customers. They get an education in life that they won’t get anywhere else.”