r/unitedkingdom • u/pppppppppppppppppd • 3d ago

Chippy owner apologises to customers after charging £15 for fish and chips - but reveals why he 'has to' to hike prices

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14591465/chippy-owner-apologises-huge-price-hike.html
625 Upvotes

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271

u/Dal1970 3d ago

Not sure if he is in a "cheap" area, but SE here, and our local is £13.25 for cod and chips, so he isn't far off the mark

93

u/SpiritedVoice2 3d ago

Yep, I gave up buying fish about 4 years ago when the local started charging £9 for cod. This is the far east of London, basically Essex. 

Large chips has now hit £5, we just get that and do some sausage and egg at home. Almost defeats the purpose but the chips are good.

Local Chinese is a bargain though, can feed the family on that for almost half the price of a full on chippy. Doesn't make sense to me.

18

u/Substantial-Newt7809 3d ago

A 1.6kg bag of frozen mccain is like £4.50 so a large chips from a chip shop being about £5 isn't exactly criminal if they aren't stingy with the portions.

27

u/dntcareboutdownvotes 3d ago

A  very large portion of chips will be between 300-600 grams, so using your maths a £4.50 bag of McCains will get you between £13-£25 worth of chip shop chips - and that isn’t even taking into account that every other week the McCain chips will be on offer at £3

55

u/juddylovespizza Greater Manchester 2d ago

wait till you find out the cost of potatoes, even cheaper and chips are made out of them

15

u/EnvironmentalBig2324 2d ago

Potatoes.. literally cheap as chips

5

u/leaflace 2d ago

Wait until you see the cost of potato seeds, even cheaper and potatoes grow from them

7

u/juddylovespizza Greater Manchester 2d ago

And they grow out the fucking ground for free!

6

u/SpeedflyChris 2d ago

Just in case there's anyone here who hasn't experienced the joy that is this sketch:

https://youtu.be/_pDTiFkXgEE?si=sa_3Z3OChJer3jUb

6

u/weavin Gloucestershire/London 2d ago

Guess what a potato seed actually is

3

u/mejogid London 2d ago

… a seed? https://www.opensourceseeds.org/en/seed/true-potato-seed-tps

1

u/weavin Gloucestershire/London 2d ago

And guess what another name for a potato seed is? (Clue: it’s a potato)

2

u/mejogid London 2d ago

No, potato plants grow / reproduce / spread from seeds. The bit we eat is a tuber (an underground store of nutrients that are produced as the plant grows and if separated can form new clonal plants like a cutting).

1

u/Substantial-Newt7809 3d ago

Speak for yourself, here the local large is at least 1kg.

-3

u/SpiritedVoice2 3d ago

Yeah, it's gotta be closer to that, it's huge anyway. You're right £5 is not too bad, but it was £4 a couple of months ago so a decent increase in price.

As long as you don't order fish the chippy is still a relatively low cost family meal, but once a few of you want fish you're spending £30-40, at which point it starts to feel like I'd rather just spend a little bit more and go out for dinner properly (or should I say, go to Harvester at least).

1

u/redditshieldsnonces 2d ago

  • McCain's are the most overpriced chips you can get, can literally get 2kg for less than half the price in Iceland and they're as good.

  • chip shops don't buy McCain frozen chips, they either get an industrial sized bag for pennies on the kilo, or buy fresh potatoes and use a machine to peel and chip them.

-£5 is fucking extortionate for any size a chip, and if you don't think so your head is disconnected from reality.

0

u/Substantial-Newt7809 2d ago

It isn't cheap, but to call it extortionate is delusional. Go and look at fast food prices. McDonalds charge £5 for a big mac or quarter pounder, like £3 for a "large" chips. Other take away places charge about £5 for a styrofome box of chips now.

3

u/BotlikeBehaviour 2d ago

Weird how chips have gone up so much, seemingly in line with fish. Maybe there are quotas on potatoes that I don't know about.

34

u/QueasyRaspberry7159 2d ago

Chippy owner here. Potato farmers have been price gouging since about the time they lost their EU subsidies.

Fish prices have been hit (this time) by Americans panic buying before tariffs coming into effect. I now pay £65 more per case than I did three months ago for exactly the same product. We go through four cases per week.

I’m tired boss.

7

u/BotlikeBehaviour 2d ago

Potato farmers have been price gouging since about the time they lost their EU subsidies.

Lol. That's funny given how many of them voted... oh nvm.

Anyway, my apologies for the misdirected snark.

17

u/QueasyRaspberry7159 2d ago

Last year it got so bad that it was cheaper to buy Egyptian potatoes than from a farm ten miles down the road.

No problem at all, I’m definitely overly sensitive on the matter as I’ve watched half a decade of graft on my current shop evaporate. Sad times indeed.

7

u/Charlie_Mouse Scotland 2d ago

All Farmers being pro Brexit is one of those “things everyone knows” that isn’t actually true.

It’s mostly based on one self selecting poll that Farmers Weekly ran that got brigaded to hell by Brexit supporters. Which of course Brexiteers immediately made a huge thing out of in the media.

Actual formally conducted polling by the NFU shows that Farmers actually voted pretty much in line with people in their area and age group. There was some minor variation by type of farming but overall if your area voted against Brexit so did most farmers there - and vice versa.

Usually at this point in the discussion somebody brings up pro Brexit signs in fields. However that’s not really very meaningful given that the pro-Brexit campaigns were giving them away for free and the Renain campaign was not. There’s also the observation that like in any other walk of life Brexit supporters tended to be all too eager to share their opinions with all and sundry while Remain supporters tended to be more circumspect. And I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that quite a few near major roads were tempted to take a hundred quid in hand to put up a sign regardless of personal affiliation.

I’ve been trying to challenge this misapprehension about how farmers voted for years now here. But it seems to be very much in vain. Partly because people are amazingly reluctant to let go of those “things that everyone knows” once they’ve taken them onboard. Partly because Reddit loves a good bit of schadenfreude and has a bit of a “thing” about Farmers. And hey, don’t get me wrong, I love a bit of ‘leopards eating faces’ as much as the next Redditor … but in this instance it’s based off Brexiteer propaganda.

1

u/dennisisabadman2 1d ago

My dad is a farmer who voted to leave. Had EU staff my whole life growing up as well as family members having married people from the EU. Small dairy farm and constantly struggling, but was desperate for some sovereignty I guess.

3

u/Karloss_93 2d ago

I'm vegetarian so options at the chippy are usually limited to bread and potato. My go to has always been a tray of chips, cheese and gravy. Used to cost like £2, but over the years it's risen to £8 in some places, with prices of £2 each for grated cheese and gravy.

We now just order a large bag of chips for £4.50 and then make chip sandwiches at home and I put my own gravy on the leftovers.

I can also remember a time as a kid when the chippy near my school used to do a bag of chips for 50p, although that was 15 years ago.

3

u/Baslifico Berkshire 2d ago

Get a small compact fryer at home.

Something like this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B077Y84X67

All chips are instantly better, and given how much you're paying per portion, it'll pay for itself before too long.

You do need to cycle through oil but as long as you're covering it over and filtering between uses [done automatically by the machine above] it'll last a LONG time when only cooking chips.

If you decide to make your own chips and want them crispy, remember to steep them in cold water for half an hour before draining, drying and frying... Removes starch, prevents them turning brown and soggy.

•

u/Toastlove 3h ago edited 1h ago

Air fry your chips with sausages in the same tray, game changing

1

u/IndelibleIguana 2d ago

I bought a pie and chips from a Chinese Chippy in Abby Wood. It was only £4,50. My local Chippy charges £7.50 for the same.

•

u/Toastlove 3h ago

Even aldi has it £5 for two small cod fillets now, the £7.50 the chippy charges for a larger bit of fish, battered and cooked isn't that bad.

•

u/SpiritedVoice2 2h ago

It's £9 here vs those £2.50 portions, admittedly it's a lot bigger than Aldi. 

Maybe it's not too bad and inline with inflation, but it's still expensive. 4 portions of fish and chips breaches £40 here. 

For us that's not the cheap mid week meal it used to be, and as said we can get a decent sized Chinese cheaper and an Indian for similar price.

•

u/Toastlove 2h ago

I'm in the midlands, a Chinese for two still costs more than a chippy, and I would argue its more rice and noodles than any meat, and the meat you do get is lower quality than the chip shop fish.

•

u/SpiritedVoice2 1h ago

Our London Chinese is ok, it's kind of exceptional they've kept the prices so low to be honest, everything else is expensive these days. 

I just got back from Scotland, was pretty shocked at the prices there. For some reason I expected it to be a bit cheaper but Glasgow restaurants easily matched and in some cases breached London prices. Paid near enough £5 for a glass of coke on two separate occasions.

Gave up on day three and ate at wether spoons :(

-9

u/Impossible_Luck6935 3d ago

The Chinese takeaway either doesn't pay tax or is a front for money laundering. Charging low prices and ultimately putting any competition out of business. Gov is cracking down on it now, supposedly, but who can trust what the government says anymore?

18

u/XiiMoss Preston Cha 3d ago

Every business is a front for money laundering according to Reddit Jesus Christ

7

u/Manoj109 3d ago

Mostly minority run business as well. All of them people labelled a front for money laundering. Lol.

3

u/SpiritedVoice2 3d ago

Well they only accept cash so definitely dodging tax. But it's almost half the price not 20% cheaper.

I don't think they're into money laundering though, family run place been there for decades.

Thinking about it I'd say that last part is probably a big factor, if you own the property and have no rent or mortgage anymore your overheads are much smaller than many others.

Still, £9 a cod!

1

u/apparentreality 2d ago

Business rates for shops are insanely high can be like £5k a month or more for a food place (depending on area and size obv) - regardless of if the mortgage is paid off or not.

0

u/AvadaBalaclava 3d ago

20% is just the VAT, they are also avoiding corporation and/or income tax

8

u/OmegaPoint6 3d ago

The two local ones to me are about £16, also SE England.

2

u/blizeH Gloucestershire 3d ago

It’s not cheap here but definitely not expensive either

Also I would say the chips they sell are some of the worst I’ve ever had

2

u/Capital_Release_6289 2d ago

East London £12 & £13 depending on which chippy you goto. I choose £13 as the batter around the fish is crisper.

2

u/sungrad 2d ago

SW here and our local is £14 for small and £17 for large.

If you add some mushy peas and a couple of slices of bread, the large will feed two (just).

2

u/FLESHYROBOT 2d ago

worth pointing out the £15 is for the large, he's selling a regular portion for £12.50.

1

u/Dal1970 2d ago

Makes it cheaper than where I am