Winning over customers who are fiercely loyal to a familiar brand is no easy task, but that’s exactly what Stokes Sauces has achieved at award-winning Bells Fish & Chips in Durham
Owner Graham Kennedy, whose family business has built its reputation on serving quality fish and chips, switched to Stokes two years ago after discovering the range at the annual Isle of Ely Potato Day. It wasn’t a change he had planned, but one he felt was worth making after tasting the sauces for himself. Confident in the flavour and quality, Graham encouraged customers across his four sites to try the sauces for themselves, offering samples with free chips while they waited for their orders.
“Customers weren’t sure at first because they didn’t know the brand or appreciate the quality,” explains Graham. “So we did blind taste tests with customers by putting portions of chips and both sauces on the counter, but we didn’t tell them which sauce was which,” he says. “Everybody picked the Stokes.”
As a result, Stokes Tomato Ketchup, Brown Sauce and Real Mayonnaise are firmly established across the business, with bottles on restaurant tables and sachets in a display box on the counter right next to the till in the takeaways. Staff continue to recommend them to customers, and the premium presentation reflects the quality of the products inside.
“Stokes Sauces look great and they taste great,” says Graham. “Everybody says how the Tomato Ketchup tastes like real tomatoes, it’s not sugary at all. It’s almost like a homemade product.”
With generous portion sizes – 40g for ketchup and 32g for both brown sauce and mayonnaise – customers get more sauce for their money. “They cost customers a little more at 75p per sachet, but you get significantly more than with our previous packs, so customers are getting a premium product and a larger serving,” says Graham. “They are proving really popular, especially at Seaham, which is on the coast, they go through a lot of them there. For us, they’re also more profitable, and most people buy two. That makes a real difference at a time when the cost of fish is rising. We’ve also just had a call from our potato supplier to say prices are set to increase because of the weather.”
For Graham, Stokes complements the quality-led approach that has helped Bells become one of County Durham’s best-known fish and chip businesses, adding: ”Trade is really good and I put that down to giving customers what they want, whether that’s serving cod or haddock or Stokes Sauces.”
Stokes Sauces sales@stokessauces.co.ukhttps://www.stokessauces.co.uk/trade/
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