QUALITY CALL FROM TRADE'S TOP FRYERS
Despite the gloomy news on the UK economy the Fish & Chip trade must keep its standards up and not go downmarket.
That's the call from a number of top proprietors in the industry, led by Gordon Hillan of the Townhead Café, the current Fish & Chip Shop of the Year. Writing in this month's FRY Monthly (see page 12), Gordon urges shops everywhere to resist buying in cheaper ingredients and cutting corners. Instead he recommends that the trade stands firm on its course of high and rising quality to best ride out any recession - and be best placed to come out of it stronger.
"Lower quality shops will do crazy things to attract trade like sell goods - or bads - at a drastically knocked down price," he writes, adding: "Guys, you cant afford it - ride the slump. Take the opportunity to market your business, it will come back stronger than before because the poor shops won't survive. They'll be looking to cut corners...this is not the way forward for quality operators."
In full agreement is Blair Butler at The Boundary in Market Deeping. "I do agree with Gordon, lowering quality is not the way to go," he says. "My customers come to me for quality and they'll always get quality from me."
Blair adds that things may even be better for the trade if the economy continues to struggle, adding: "It's been my experience that when things do go belly up people do eat more takeaways. They don't eat out at other restaurants as much as are fed up cooking at home feeling down, so they go for takeaways more."
Sales of Fish & Chips are continuing to rise despite the credit crunch, according to figures released by Seafish. Research from the NPD Crest statistics also found that the number of people going to fast-food restaurants rose by 3.2 percent in the first quarter of 2008, compared to the previous year. One in every £100 spent on food is in a Fish & Chip shop, equating to more than 276 million meals of Fish & Chips sold every year from almost 10,500 shops
