Expert Eye: Will Burrell, Yarm Road Fish & Chips, Darlington, County Durham

 It’s been a whirlwind few months for Will who is juggling a new baby, a restaurant opening and everything that goes with running an award-winning takeaway  

We’re about a third of the way through our reign as Fish & Chip Takeaway of the Year, and life’s not slowed down one bit, in fact, it’s ramped up. We’ve just had a baby, we’re nearly ready to open our new restaurant, and the team’s growing too. It’s full-on, but it’s brilliant.

Becoming a dad has been incredible. Annabel-Jane is already six weeks old and she’s changed everything, in the best way. She’s sleeping, eating well and growing fast. My wife Jess is doing really well too. She works for the NHS, so the maternity leave structure has been great for her. We’re just trying to find time for everything and juggle everything as it comes.

On the business side, we’ve been focused on getting the restaurant ready. That’s been the big project. We’ve taken on a couple of new staff members, with another in the pipeline, so that should bring our total to 13, which is a good number for where we want to be. We’ve tried to grow the team organically, making sure everyone is trained properly and shares our standards before we open the doors.

The build itself has gone really well. We used Elite Shopfitters again. Dave and his team did our takeaway about eight years ago and it still looks brand new. We knew we wanted them involved again – Dave’s got some great ideas and a tonne of experience. Between his guidance and our vision, it’s all come together nicely.

We also had a new frying range installed a few months ago and the capacity on that is unbelievable, it’s genuinely surprised us. That’s going to serve us well when the restaurant is up and running.

We’re nearly there with opening the restaurant. We had the launch of The National Fish & Chip Awards 2026 on Monday, which was a fantastic practice run for us and I’m pleased to say it went brilliantly, so we’re probably just a week or two away from opening, hopefully. It’ll seat between 40 and 45, which is our maximum really. Along the way, we’ve spoken to a lot of great operators, people like Graham Kennedy at Bells and Caroline Murphy at The Wetherby Whaler, who’ve been so generous offering advice and systems to serve a busy takeaway and restaurant at the same time.

The restaurant will let us expand the menu too. We’ve invested in a serious oven so we can finally offer pies, and then we’ve introduced a few starters and desserts that we couldn’t do before in the takeaway. Eventually, we’ll run some specials too – maybe Norwegian saithe, maybe hake – but we want to get the basics nailed first.

Fish prices haven’t gone quite as crazy as we expected, thankfully. We’ve always been strict with margins, we know what size fish to cook, what to charge, and what overheads we’ve got. You’ve got to value your products, we know we’re still very good value for money as an industry and on our own. What we’ve learnt over the years is that customers will pay a bit more for quality, and we make sure we deliver that every time.

The takeaway now almost runs itself thanks to our team, which means I can focus more on the restaurant. Once that’s ticking over, I’ll be looking at getting more involved with the industry, inviting people in and sharing ideas. That’s something I’m really looking forward to.

For now though, I’m just enjoying the madness. New baby, new restaurant, same great fish and chips!