McWhinney’s going great guns at Garioch Fish Bar

Garioch Fish Bar in Inverurie, Aberdeen is a highly regarded fish and chip shop known for its quality food and excellent service.

Glen Morrison, who runs the business alongside his father Murray, has been shortlisted in the Top 8 for the 2025 Drywite Young Fish Frier Award, having reached the final in 2024.

The list of their achievements doesn’t stop there; they have made the Top 10 for the Field to Frier Award and the Top 20 Fish & Chip Shops in the National Fish & Chip Awards. They are proud holders of Fry Magazine’s 50 Best Takeaways Award, having made the list for three consecutive years, and were recently named Best Team at the Scottish Fish & Chip Awards.  

Always looking for their next improvement and initiative, the pair has just introduced a new promotion. Glen explains: “The recent budget has affected all businesses and the National Insurance changes come straight off our bottom line. We don’t want to just keep adding to the cost to our customers and we wanted to give something back so we started our ‘Monday Madness’ promotion with broken haddock made into goujons, served with chips for a supper at £4.95. We push this on social media, and even when we don’t get a lot of likes the phone continually rings for orders.”

Instead of running it at a set price, staff let customers choose the amount of goujons and price them individually to suit their appetite and spend. “We’d rather have a customer come back for a little, than not at all,” says Glen. 

Another recent menu improvement has been switching to McWhinney’s sausages.

Murray explains: ‘’It was around two years ago we made the switch. We were using a great butcher’s sausage and selling about 100 a week. The price then increased significantly from 50p to 80p. We were contacted by McWhinney’s who reached out to the winners of the Fry 50 Best competition and offered to work a promotion with us.” 

Garioch gave away 20 boxes worth of sausages each sold with a portion of chips. “We received great feedback from our customers on the quality and now our sausage sales are at around 400 a week,” says Murray, who has also started selling McWhinney’s Bigfoot sausages – a 12-inch version for customers with a larger appetite. 

At the recent Scottish Fish & Chip Awards, Murray bumped into Scott McWhinney, sales and marketing director at McWhinney’s Sausages, where he gave him his feedback, explaining: “I told Scott that my wife is a really fussy eater and she loves McWhinney’s. When cooked, they have minimal fat come out in the pan and it’s the only sausage she will ever eat!’’ 

McWhinney’s Sausages 028 9127 1811 www.mcwhinneys.com