‘Quite a few have given up’: fish and chip shops battered by rising costs

theguardian.com:

“If I were a panicker, I’d be very scared.” Andrew Crook is putting on a brave face but he’s worried. The owner of Skippers of Euxton, a fish and chip shop near Chorley in Lancashire, has already had to put his prices up four times this year, and he fears yet another increase is just around the corner as he battles a tidal wave of rising costs and pressures.

The UK’s fish and chip industry is facing its biggest challenge in its 160-year history, according to Crook, who speaks for the nation’s beloved chippies as president of the National Federation of Fish Friers (NFFF).

Each week several fish and chip shops among his 1,200-strong membership are going out of business, Crook says, as they are clobbered by rocketing fish and cooking oil prices, as well as the cost of the energy required to fry the food, all at a time when consumers are watching their spending more closely than ever.

But there is no end in sight, as restaurateurs’ energy contracts end and they find themselves on the hook for much bigger bills.

“This week one down the road from me closed. It opened four years ago and they’ve decided enough’s enough. With Covid and then this, it’s just too much,” Crook said. “Some which closed, the cheaper ones, just couldn’t show the price increase; quite a few that were coming up to retirement have just given up.”

The war in Ukraine has already had an impact on energy and raw material costs, and lurking on the horizon is the government’s delayed introduction of a 35% tariff on imports of Russian whitefish.

Large quantities of Russian whitefish such as cod and haddock caught in the Barents Sea and frozen instantly onboard factory ships make their way on to consumers’ plates as takeaway fish suppers or supermarket fish fingers and