Yarm Road is sticking to its guns and doing what it does best despite winning Fish & Chip Takeaway of the Year, insists Will
Winning Fish & Chip Takeaway of the Year has been nothing short of a dream come true. Since the announcement, trade has been incredible – we’ve seen an increase of between 25% and 30%, which is beyond anything we imagined.
We never expected this kind of increase as Yarm Road isn’t exactly a destination town, and we were pretty busy as it was. But the response has been phenomenal, and we’re so grateful to everyone who has supported us.
Not to sound arrogant, but we were ready for the increase. Even though I genuinely didn’t expect to win, on the off chance we did, we made sure to train a few extra staff members. When we found out we had won, we said, right, let’s stick to what we do best. The temptation was there to ramp up operations, add more click-and-collect slots, and push capacity to the max. But that’s not what we are about. We didn’t want customers waiting an hour instead of half an hour just because we wanted to squeeze in more orders. So we’ve stuck to our guns, done things at our pace, and it’s worked really well. We focused on maintaining quality and consistency by adding an extra staff member to each shift and that has allowed us to have a bit more structure and for everyone to focus on their stations.
The new restaurant is taking shape. There’s still plenty to do but the hard yards – drainage, electrics and such – are done, and now it’s onto plastering and putting in the tables and chairs. We don’t have a firm opening date yet, but we’re aiming for around six weeks from now. Initially, we thought it might be sooner, but this timing has actually worked in our favour, giving us time to settle into the increased trade before taking on another big step.
We’ve got a couple of amazing trips coming up as a result of winning our award – one to Japan and two others to Norway and Iceland. It’s been a huge focus for us to ensure the business runs smoothly even when we’re away – not because we don’t want to be here, but from a flexibility point of view. We’ve seen it in years gone by where we’ve lost a member of staff for whatever reason and the operation starts to struggle. So I’ve really tried to future-proof the business so that whatever crops up, we can deal with it. How we’ve done this is by internal promotion and training. We’ve developed a system where our manager is now trained to handle my responsibilities, and in turn, someone has stepped up to take over hers. This has created a team of people who aren’t just working a job but are genuinely invested in the business and our vision.
Things have started to settle a little now – though business remains strong, the initial whirlwind has calmed. Those first few weeks were a blur, with tourists showing up, GoPros in hand. Now, we can take a breath and truly appreciate what’s happened. Just the other day, I texted my dad, saying Can you actually believe it?
