Mario’s Other Plaice keeps customers coming back with clever marketing ideas that include secret words, star-shaped chips and end-of-the-night discounted food bags
Tucked away on the corner of a busy A-road in Brownhills, Walsall, is Mario’s Other Plaice, a chip shop with a queue down the pavement and a buzz that feels more like a Friday night pub than a takeaway. It’s not the location, or even the hours – just 12 a week – that explain the shop’s success, but the way owner Andy Mario engages with his customers.
If you walk into Mario’s and ask for “lashings”, you’ll get free onion rings or potato wedges. It stems from a customer who used to always say “lashings’” when staff asked if he wanted salt and vinegar. “Because the customer used to interact with us on social media, we tagged him in a post that said ‘lashings’ with a picture of onion rings, nothing else,” explains Andy, who bought the chippy in 2009 with wife Steph. “Customers were coming in and saying, “What’s lashings? What does it mean?” So I said anyone who says lashings gets free onion rings or potato wedges. I can have a massive queue out the door, and at least 10 of them will say it!”
And then there’s the various different chip shapes that pop up in portions of chips. “A mum came in with her child and explained that he was autistic and wouldn’t eat chips,” Andy says. “I did three or four stars and put them in with his fishcake and after that his mum would ask for them with his order. The rest, I would through into the chips and when customers asked what they were, I’d say something to make you smile.”
Andy now cuts at least 100 shapes a shift, and sometimes, he’ll cut a completely unique one, for example recently it was a Mickey Mouse head. “If customers find it, they tag us on social media and get their order completely free. If they find a star, it’s free onion rings. The onion rings don’t cost me anything, I make them myself, and I get great publicity from it,” he says.
Not every night is a fish night. When the fresh Scottish cod that Andy sources gets pricey — or when his merchant struggles to fulfil a complete order as Andy has found several times of late — he doesn’t panic, he pivots, and gently guides customers without them realising it.
“If I know I’ve got a little bit of fish, I go on to our social media and put ‘fresh fish is very scarce. Please get your pre-orders in’,” he explains. “That way I know what I’ve already sold. And at the same time, I’ll blast out a different product, say kebabs, and I know I’ll sell loads of kebab meat. If the fish goes sky high, I won’t advertise it, I’ll advertise something else.”
Then there are the magic bags. Inspired by Too Good To Go – but without paying them a cut – Andy devised a clever way to keep the cabinets full late in the evening and still maintain profitability.
Andy explains: “Come 8pm, the shop used to slow down so my cabinet was empty and we just had bits and pieces. It meant when customers did come in, there wasn’t much there for them so they’d only buy a bag of chips, or chips and curry and I was embarrassed that I had nothing to sell. With these bags, it enables me to keep my cabinet full with the cheaper items, like sausages and scallops, so when the customers are coming in, we’re still hitting the £15-20 sales.”
The bags are promoted on Facebook from 8.30pm and sell for £7 but contain at least £15 worth of leftover food. They include items such as a bag of chips, peas, curry, gravy, sausages, kebab meat, onion rings and scallops, but never fish as that is always cooked to order.
It’s a far cry from the business Andy and Steph took over almost 20 years ago. “Think of the worst shop you can imagine and that was it,” recalls Andy. “We would have been better in an empty shop and starting from there. It had such a bad reputation.”
However, 13 years working with his mum and dad at Mario’s — a shop they opened a mile away after arriving from Cyprus in 1982 — taught Andy a strong work ethic and the skills he needed to turn things around.
What money he and Steph had went into new equipment — fridges, freezers, and other essentials — and within four months, business had picked up enough for them to hire help. By year two, they could finally look around and think, ‘We’re doing well’. Now, the shop has become a local institution and a place where kids get excited about mystery-shaped chips and adults hunt for magic bags on Facebook. And that’s despite only opening 5pm-9pm on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays.
Mario’s Other Plaice used to open six days a week, but after Covid, Andy and Steph worked out how much the shop needed to make to pay the bills and for their family to survive, and reassessed accordingly. They have also refrained from adding a deliver service, saying the shop is just too busy. “The shop opens at five o’clock but we’ll open the shutter up at 4.30pm, and you can see the queue already outside. I’d rather give priority to the customers that come in. But also our shop is unique, I can’t explain it. If you come in our shop, the buzz and the atmosphere is something else. Everyone knows everyone and everyone’s talking. It’s a real neighbourhood shop, which is another reason why we won’t do delivery. We’ve also got a great group of girls who work for us and who make all the difference. We couldn’t have achieved this without their hard work too.”
As well as fish, sausages, pies and kebabs, Mario’s offers plain and battered chips fried in a choice of beef dripping or palm oil. “We’ve actually got a small menu, well, it’s a small menu for us, it might be massive compared to other people. But every month we’ll do something different. My dad used to say: “Move with the times, or else the times will move you, so that’s what we do.”
For example, one month it’s half tandoori chicken, another it’s award-winning black pudding or homemade Scotch eggs both utilising ingredients from the local butcher. Last summer, Andy even bought ice cream from a nearby dessert shop and fried it after a quick blast freeze.
“We’ll just blast it out on social media, the fact that two local businesses are combining,” Andy says. “Every week we look on Facebook and see how many people we’ve interacted with. One week it’ll be 100,000 people, another 900,000.”
Whether it’s secret words, shaped chips, or magic bags, Mario’s Other Plaice proves you don’t need big hours, big teams, or big budgets, you just need to engage with your local community and get creative along the way – and maybe through in the occasional star-shaped chip.
