Expert Eye: Mark Petrou, Petrou Brothers, Chatteris, Cambridgeshire 

Tackling menu creep, looking beyond fish, and finding opportunities to make money even when the shop is closed form part of Mark’s line of defence as he enters a new year

I’ve always believed the shop has to work for you, even when the shutters are down. So alongside the chippy, I do the catering for a little private school. I’ve been doing their school dinners for about six or seven years now. I charge them £4.25 per child per day and they get fruit, yogurt and a main course. One day a week, on a Friday, it’s something with chips, and the rest of the week I’ll do things like lasagne, pasta bake or a roast chicken dinner. I’ll be honest, I cheat a bit on the roast potatoes and do them on my range, but it works perfectly!

I also make fishcakes for a well-known fish and chip shop. They send all their fish trimmings to me and I turn them into fishcakes. In the summer they’re using about a thousand fishcakes a week, so again, that’s another way of making my business earn for me. I’ve got a five-star rated kitchen, so when the chip shop’s shut, I put it to good use and bring in other revenue streams. In times like these, you have to look at what you’ve already got and make it work harder.

As an industry, we’ve definitely got challenges, but I’m determined to stay positive. Fish prices are the big driver and I don’t think we’re at the top of that mountain yet. Going into this year, it really is a numbers game. We can’t control the price of fish, but we can control the quality of the service we give, the smiles we put on, and how lean we run the business. I think it’s really important that, over the counter, we stay positive so leave your troubles in the back room. Our biggest strength is how connected we are to our customers. The big operators throw money at advertising and image, a luxury we don’t have, but we throw smiles, service and personality, and we do it well.

I’ve changed my menu so it works better for me this year. When my dad was in the trade, a regular portion of fish was much smaller, but over the years there’s been a kind of menu creep, so I’m recalibrating portion sizes. I’ve rebranded my mini fish meal and now call it a “light bite” because it changes people’s perception and lets me move the price point. It also means the mini fish meal is redundant because I’d rather sell a portion of chips with some cod bites, which allows me to use up the small pieces of fish and trim and it protects my margins. My large fish is still on the menu, but I’ve priced it so high that I don’t really want to sell it. It’s there to make my regular look like good value. I’ve already had three price increases this year, and I know there are more to come.

Raw material costs are only part of the challenge we face this year as customers have less money to spend. Coming up with menu items that inspire customers to switch and save, and that give us better margins might seem like a tall order, but in Holland, fried businesses operate selling hardly any fish. They focus on things like mozzarella sticks, rissoles and potato cakes that hit these targets. Getting creative like this doesn’t mean spending on more equipment or extra staff and, if you basket fry to order, there’s no waste, no extra pans, staff, energy or oil. |It just means getting organised and getting motivated. I tend to give customers one or two items to try with their regular order to give them a push. Upselling like that can make a massive difference without adding too much to your VAT bill. 

It’s tough, I won’t lie. We’re just about staying ahead of the bills, and VAT is a killer. When you get busier, the VAT bill goes up, and it takes real discipline to set that money aside. But you paint the smile on, you go out, and you do it. That’s the job.