Fish and chip shops reported strong sales over the Easter weekend, with Good Friday again proving one of the busiest trading days of the year. However, operators said cooler weather and rising costs limited performance for some businesses and may have impacted overall profitability.
At Colmans of South Shields, which is celebrating its centenary this year, queues stretched along Ocean Road as the restaurant and takeaway served nearly 3,000 portions on Good Friday. Its sister site, Colmans Seafood Temple, achieved similar volumes, while its Fenwick outlet recorded more than 500 covers, with fish and chips accounting for 95% of sales across all sites.
Richard Ord Jnr, director of Colmans, said: “It’s the busiest Good Friday we’ve done numbers-wise. From open till closed, there was still a queue out the door, but what is funny is that I don’t think anybody waited longer than about 30 minutes. It was a case of having full teams in and being efficient, everybody knew exactly what they need to do so it was a well-oiled machine.”
He added that demand remained strong despite pricing pressures: “It just goes to show there is still a huge demand for fish and chips and that we’re still priced in the market. Fish and chips is still good value, it’s nutritious, I’ll always be fighting its cause.”
For Grandpa’s Fish Bar in Lanchester, Durham, it was only their second Easter, with brothers Rich and Aidan Weatherburn opening the business just three weeks before Easter last year. Open from 12–7.30pm, they decorated their window, ran a competition to win a queue jump pass, and operated their van. Offering walk-in only and a reduced menu to improve speed of service, they sold around 700 portions on Good Friday – triple their average Friday sales.
Rich said: “We had full staff on, every single person that works for us worked Good Friday in some capacity. And then I also borrowed a chef from our local pub to assist on the van.
“It was a record-breaking day for us. Last year Good Friday was a complete baptism of fire, so we were quite prepared this year. We’re in a lovely little village with real community spirit, and everyone came out to support us. We had a queue from the minute we opened and there was never a time when someone wasn’t waiting to be served.”
The shop also saw increased trade in the days surrounding Good Friday. “I think quite a few people were trying to dodge Good Friday on the other days as well,” he added.
Despite the strong footfall, profitability remained a concern, with Rich adding: “Sometimes you wonder if it was worth it with all the effort around it and in terms of profitability. Obviously, on a Good Friday everyone gets fish and chips, whereas on other days of the week we sell quite a lot of sausage and fish cakes, which are much more profitable. But overall, it was a very busy weekend for us.”
In York, takeaway of the year winner The Scrap Box doubled its Good Friday trade year-on-year, serving more than 1,000 portions. Co-owner Aman Dhesi began preparations at 4am, with a team of eight working throughout the day.
Aman said: “I don’t know exactly how many portions we did, but it was in the four figures, over 1,000. On Monday we ran out of fish and potatoes and had to close at seven. We expected it to be a busier Monday, but it was just crazy.”
Operational changes, including blanching chips, offering regular haddock only and using deeper bain maries to hold more sides, helped maintain service.
“It went really smoothly,” said Aman. “There was a queue when we opened at 11, which carried on through the day, but it never got bigger than eight or nine people long, so it flowed really well. We’ve learned a few things from it – we’re probably going to take large haddock off the menu altogether, it just made life 10 times easier. We’re also thinking of adding our lunchtime hake to the main menu. If we’ve just got cod, haddock and hake all in one size, it makes it easier. It was a good experiment and there wasn’t much backlash.”
Meanwhile, Bennetts in Weymouth, Dorset, reported a busy but not record-breaking Easter, with owner Mark Bennett pointing to weather forecasts and consumer caution as limiting factors.
“We did have a very busy Good Friday and a good Easter weekend in general, but not the bumper weekend we would have had with a better weather prediction say two weeks prior as I think the campsites may have been fuller earlier. But ultimately, people haven’t got the money in their pockets.”
He also highlighted changing tourism patterns, with campsites keeping visitors on-site during poorer weather, reducing footfall in seaside locations. “Campsites have got a little clever and are holding people on site more, and that’s definitely an issue on a weekend where the weather forecast isn’t great as people won’t venture out,” he said.
Despite this, Bennetts saw strong demand for pre-orders. “There was definitely an uplift in click and collect,” Mark added. “We were loaded up with pre-orders and deliveries and had to slow deliveries down a little bit to keep control.
“People were still coming out for their Good Friday fish and chips, we just didn’t have that bumper swell, but we served who we would normally serve, both locally and tourist-wise.”
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