According to Panteli, high taxes on hot food (20 percent) hinders the industry’s ability to price menu items competitively. There is a way for the government to slow the bleeding, but it hasn’t yet taken action on that front. Shop owners are having to get inventive and menus are changing as other products are having to be sourced.” Panteli predicts “the impact could be so extreme that the shops that somehow manage to survive will no longer be recognizable as the business they once were. Forced to offer a wider, more creative menu to make ends meet, struggling chip shops may look completely different in a few years. What does all of this mean for the fish and chip landscape? Well, the beloved shops likely won’t disappear entirely, but many may transform into something that doesn’t resemble the shops you grew up with. We are being forced to increase our prices which is seeing a significant drop in customer footfall.” “Many pubs are diversifying their business models to include cheap food, which has slowly eroded our position within the fast food market. This is eating into the fish and chip market, further exacerbating their economic woes. This problem is spanning the restaurant industry, with many restaurants expanding their offerings to include cheaper food to appeal to a broader customer base. This has forced fish and chip shop owners to put their prices up to not only remain profitable, but to survive.” The wholesale prices of fish, oil, and gas has meant we have seen steady increases in these commodity prices for years, magnified by recent world events. “Historically, says Panteli, “the British fish and chips dinner has been a low-cost, tasty, healthy and hearty way to feed the family – steeped in years of tradition spanning generations. Customers expect fish and chips to be affordable, so there’s not much room for menu prices to increase before consumers opt for a cheaper alternative. While eateries experiencing higher ingredient costs always have the option of raising their prices, that’s a bit tricky for fish and chip shops. Fertilizer has tripled in price as well, and the price of flour – another ingredient hit with shortages – has gone up as well. According to Panteli, businesses are now paying 83 percent more for sunflower oil (which is imported from Ukraine) than they were in early March, before the invasion, and 40 percent of the industry’s white fish comes from Russia, which is similarly seeing a massive price hike. These ingredients include sunflower oil, white fish, fertilizer for potatoes, and flour for batter mixes. It’s like if a third of New York City’s pizza shops closed, or a third of Denver’s cannabis dispensaries.Ĭhris Panteli, who owns and operates Leominster Fish Bar in Herefordshire, told Matador Network, “all four of the key ingredients that make up a traditional fish and chip supper are being affected concurrently.” Andrew Cook, president of the National Federation of Fish Friers, told CNN that up to one third of the country’s 10,000 fish and chip shops could close in the coming months. The war has placed immense strain on the already struggling industry.
A few of the main ingredients for this iconic dish aren’t British, but are actually are imported from these two countries. While the rising cost of ingredients has always been an issue for fish and chip shops, whose profit margins are razor thin, those costs have risen astronomically since Russia invaded Ukraine in late February.
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