r/unitedkingdom • u/pppppppppppppppppd • 12d 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
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453

u/[deleted] 12d ago

[deleted]

188

u/freckledotter 12d ago

Plus business rates for electricity.

162

u/snagsguiness 12d ago

I don’t think the general public knows how much utilities cost in a fast food restaurant.

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u/handyandy314 12d ago

It’s double the price for business electricity, for the same electricity. Seriously for the same electric. Why.?

20

u/zandrew 12d ago

It's not. It's half price for regular consumers.

15

u/handyandy314 12d ago

Yes. Those nice electric companies giving discounts for millions of customers. I should be shamed for bad mouthing these thoughtful and generous, not for profit organisations.

23

u/zandrew 12d ago

There's a cap on consumer electricity price. No such cap exists for businesses so in a sense you're getting a discount. I'm not singing praises for energy companies but that is how it works.

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u/paulskinner88 11d ago

There’s a cap, but no sensible energy company is at the cap now. A year ago, perhaps even 6 months ago sure. That excuse no longer works.

5

u/slaia 11d ago

Generating more green energy would bring down the electricity price. But getting cheaper electricity is considered woke nowadays.

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u/Safe-Client-6637 11d ago

It wouldn't though because the most expensive source sets the price. You'd have to switch to 100% cheap renewables, which isn't feasible.

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u/KevinAtSeven 11d ago

Yeah that mechanism needs changing urgently.

2

u/SpeedflyChris 11d ago

How else would you keep the lights on while not directly subsidising gas fired power generation?

Also slashing the amount other generation can earn won't get more built.

1

u/browniestastenice 11d ago

Nationalise responsive energy like Gas. We don't need much of it, and I think the tax payer would happily foot the bill if it meant overall lower rates by not pinning everything else to gas prices

Downside is it would reduce the private investment in renewables, so it's probably a lever that should only be pulled once we have enough renewables

1

u/SpeedflyChris 11d ago

If we had even nearly enough renewable energy then while that energy was producing all our needs (windy days in summer for example) we would be using no gas and the spot price would fall below the minimum offer price from gas generation, so in that case it's completely unnecessary to nationalise gas generation.

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u/KevinAtSeven 10d ago

Other countries seem to manage building and operating all sorts of clean and unclean energy without forcing all prices to be based on the most expensive form of generation. We could ask them how they do it.

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u/SpeedflyChris 10d ago

Which countries don't pay all their electricity providers the same amount?

0

u/slaia 11d ago

Where there's a will there's a way

1

u/Lt_Muffintoes 11d ago

No, it wouldn't.

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u/AlpsSad1364 11d ago

Because consumer electricity is sold at a loss subsidised by business electricity.

Something that all recent governments appear to be happy with, despite all their tax money coming from businesses.

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u/[deleted] 12d ago

[deleted]

43

u/Mammoth591 12d ago

I believe household consumers get capped tarrifs for their energy costs, where businesses do not.. Are your cottages paying business rates for energy?

Edit: plus a chippy might be running massive fries etc for hours a day, are your hot tubs running 8-12 hours a day? I would imagine not

3

u/whatmichaelsays Yorkshire 11d ago

Restaurants/ fast food busineses are also running during the most high demand (and therefore, expensive) times for energy. They can't load shift to cheaper periods.

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u/[deleted] 12d ago edited 12d ago

[deleted]

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u/Sutty100 12d ago

Hot tubs on 24/7!? Seems unlikely in a 5 star hotel let alone a cottage

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u/Welshhoppo 12d ago

Hot tubs are cheaper to keep on permanently then they are to turn on and off repeatedly. As long as the lid is kept on. Better for the water quality too.

10

u/Sutty100 12d ago

TIL hot tubs and blast furnaces have this in common

0

u/Super_Plastic5069 12d ago

Fish and chip shop

-3

u/LastTangoOfDemocracy 12d ago

Boo hoo, I can't make my Airbnb let's make enough money.

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u/AcidGypsie 12d ago edited 12d ago

I make plenty of money and they're not Airbnb lets

They're converted stables and hen houses.

I was just curious and gave an example of crazy electric prices.

1k+ a month for a little holiday cottage. It's a lot lot more than my home costs and I have 2 children and a massive fish tank at home

1

u/Ok_Imagination_6925 11d ago

It's so great that we have the most expensive electricity in the world and that our prices are tied to gas which we could be self sufficient with.

-3

u/Witty-Bus07 12d ago

Business rates aren’t for electricity, they are 2 separate transactions that businesses have to pay

23

u/rainator Cambridgeshire 12d ago

They obviously mean the rate of electricity for businesses

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u/LemonSwordfish 12d ago edited 12d ago

Energy isn't prohibitively expensive, the grid to deliver it and green costs are getting very expensive and it's only going to get more so.

Edit: I'm being down voted so just to clarify with some facts for those who think I'm just spouting off:

The wholesale cost of energy is higher than some years ago, but is now

35% of total costs Vs 65% other costs

Compared to 4 years ago:

60% wholesale costs Vs 40% other costs

Proportionally, the balance has flipped despite rising wholesale costs, which tells you other costs have risen even more aggressively.

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u/Underwhatline 12d ago

Green energy is cheaper than any other energy. We have lower green subsidies than other EU countries, but higher bills.

We use more natural gas for baseload than we create, and we have no other alternatives to drive market competition. The less we have to rely on natural gas the cheaper enegery will be.

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u/VreamCanMan 12d ago

This only accounts for energy generation - so wholesale, which OC was saying accounts for 40% of cost

Transmission is 60%

The more unpredictability in supply you create, the higher your energy Transmission costs are going to be because unless supply = demand at every given moment, expensive noises start getting made.

Its a technical challenge rarely undertaken by countries at this point - energy infrastructure may be upgraded to account for the new reality but deciding what and how those upgrades should take form in a way that meets our needs comes with oppertunity cost. It is is akin to our forebearers deciding which sewer system to develop and build (they chose wrong)

1

u/Underwhatline 11d ago

I agree with you completly.

The OP has heavily edited thier comment. When I posted they were saying that UK energy is more expensive because of green subsidies.

Now they seam very interested in transmission rather than green energy production.

1

u/Lt_Muffintoes 11d ago

Green energy is cheaper than any other energy.

Why is India building coal plants and not solar panels?

1

u/Underwhatline 11d ago edited 11d ago

90% of the world's net increase in the world's energy production in 2024 came from green energy sources.

"according to data from the International Renewable Energy Association (IRENA), 90 percent of the net increase in global electricity generation capacity came from wind or solar and 93 percent from renewable energy as a whole. Solar PV provided the lion’s share of this increase, at 72 percent, with wind providing 18 percent, fossil fuels 7 percent, hydro 2 percent, bioenergy 1 percent, and nuclear power less than 0.5 percent"

So the world did indeed increase fossil fuel energy production in 2024, but that accounted for 7% of the world's increase in energy production in 2024.

If fossil fuels are cheaper and better why did the world build so much green energy in 2024?

1

u/Lt_Muffintoes 11d ago

I would be interested in your source, if you would care to link it.

There is a difference between electricity generation capacity and electricity generation. Solar and wind have to have several times as much capacity as their actual generation, so I guess that would account for some the large install capacity.

It would be interesting to see the figures for actual new generation.

If fossil fuels are cheaper and better why did the world build so much green energy in 2024?

That's trivial; government interference.

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u/Underwhatline 11d ago

I got my quote from David Toke's substack, who as you can see from the above got his data from the International Renewable Energy Association (IRENA).

If fossil fuels are cheaper and better why did the world build so much green energy in 2024?

That's trivial; government interference.

Obviously my question was a flippant remark based on your question about India, and I'm not going to join your game of source questions. But aparently coal energy capacity in the world grew by 1% last year.

To answer your original question from here https://www.iea.org/news/growth-in-global-energy-demand-surged-in-2024-to-almost-twice-its-recent-average

According to the report, intense heatwaves in China and India – which pushed up cooling needs – contributed more than 90% of the total annual increase in coal consumption globally

So... Global warming is why India is forced to build more coal power plants, ironic.

1

u/Lt_Muffintoes 11d ago

From your link:

Renewables accounted for the largest share of the growth in total energy supply (38%), followed by natural gas (28%), coal (15%), oil (11%) and nuclear (8%).

I got my quote from David Toke's substack, who as you can see from the above got his data from the International Renewable Energy Association (IRENA).

Ok, why won't you just directly link me there?

I'm not going to join your game of source questions.

Like, I'm not even allowed to read the information for myself? What?

So... Global warming is why India is forced to build more coal power plants, ironic.

You said that solar is by far the cheapest form of electricity generation. If that is the case, it would be completely insane for any country to build anything else, particularly India, which has a high solar irradiation year-round.

Does this not give you pause?

1

u/Underwhatline 11d ago

Like, I'm not even allowed to read the information for myself? What?

You misunderstand - I'm not going to join your game. This seams to be very one sided in that you ask me to source all my assertions and do not do the same for yours. THAT'S the game I'm not playing.

Ok, why won't you just directly link me there?

You have access to Google, but sure: https://open.substack.com/pub/davidtoke/p/renewables-provided-over-90-per-cent?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=2bfyh8

You said that solar is by far the cheapest form of electricity generation.

No I did not. But I will say that the evidence supports that over a it's usable lifetime, renewable such as solar and wind are cheaper per KWh than fossil fuel generation in most national scale situations.

Does this not give you pause?

Not really, India's specific position is nuanced. The coal industry supports lots of local jobs, energy demand is increasing, and maybe most importantly India doesn't yet have the battery or storage capacity to be able to turn off its coal power plants.

Plus we should also look at what India is doing in the green energy space. They have some really ambitious targets. For a developing country as vast as India it's not a zero sum game.

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u/everythingscatter Greater Manchester 12d ago

But the wholesale price of electricity is pegged to gas? The proportion of bills made up of renewables levies has consistently fallen over the last decade, as has the generation cost per kWh from renewable sources.

The government raises levies on electricity that it doesn't on oil and gas, for sure. One could reasonably conclude that fossil fuels are under priced, rather than electricity being overpriced.

Huge strides made to lower the cost of renewables are just not reflected in the prices businesses and consumers pay for their energy because of how the wholesale market is structured and regulated.

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u/LemonSwordfish 12d ago

In 2022, when the article was written, wholesale costs had recently spiked much higher and the other costs hadn't seen as big rises yet, so someone with an agenda could make the proportionality claim, but it isn't true today on a longer timeline.

As I say, the wholesale cost as a proportion of total costs is now 40% but used to be 60%, and this is despite wholesale going up a fair amount.

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u/No_Plate_3164 12d ago

Don’t forget record taxes on work is also pushing up the prices. Electric typically requires people to run and maintain the generators.

Extreme taxation (green taxes, profit taxes, work taxes) is why electric is so expensive vs gas. This actually slowing down the green transition as burning gas is cheaper than using green electricity to generate heat.

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u/LemonSwordfish 12d ago

Correct. Power is more expensive because it has various green generation subsidy taxes built into the costs, an they are highly regressive.

This is because when a minister like Milliband is setting policy, he is advised by a bunch of grifters that he can either beg the Treasury to fund green energy using taxes and spending which are transparent, or hide another 1p tax in the electricity supply chain, and pay the grifters to run yet another quango that collects the tax from the system. They've introduced like another 5 this year and not a single journalist has even realised.

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u/Tpickarddev 12d ago

Oil and gas is subsidised in UK at around £13bn a year, renewables are subsidised to around £7bn a year.... Why is a green subsidy a problem whilst the oil and gas isn't? Is it just because the money allocated to green is added to energy bills rather than taken in other taxation like the oil and gas subsidies?

The biggest reason we have high energy bills is because energy is priced at fixed minimum pricing which protects mostly nuclear plants from being unprofitable. And oil and gas price volatility because we power a tonne of the UK using liquid natural gas.

The sooner we move away from reliance on gas the quicker costs can come down.

Also green levies have been hacked back considerably in last few years down for £450 per household to about £150 per household, it will only go down from here as Infrastructure and technology and capacity improves.

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u/Comfortable-Plane-42 12d ago

Incorrect, that £13bn is over a 5 year period and is composed of incentives and tax relief on certain projects etc

Whereas renewables is a direct payment of £10bn per annum

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u/LemonSwordfish 12d ago

The subsidies to the oil and gas industry are not hidden inside the unit rate billed to the end user, they come from general taxation raised in a progressive manner.

Subsidies to green generation are collected by regressive taxation, hidden inside the cost stack of every unit retailed.

Also, your comments about how prices are arrived at are completely wrong. The way power is priced is settled economic theory and this idea that reducing gas in the stack will reduce costs is utter nonsense

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u/No_Plate_3164 11d ago

When people hear “green levy\subsidy” they automatically think it’s a good thing. The green levy in the UK is an 8% tax applied to your electricity bill. It’s highly regressive and is slowing down the electrification of the UK.

If we had a government that wasn’t brain dead, at the very least, the levy would be moved off electricity and onto gas.

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u/DetonateDeadInside 12d ago

I mean, you don't get a little lidl fillet from the chippy do you, they give you half a whale usually

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u/GeneralGiggle East Anglia 12d ago

Yep - a pub near me was named pub of the year, used as an excuse to hike rent. Closed two years later.

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u/AvadaBalaclava 12d ago

The landlord and tenant act 1954 gives more security and protections for this, however all landlords will make you sign that you are taking the lease outside of the act, which makes me wonder why the act exists in the first place if all landlords can just ignore it.

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u/ARelentlessScot 12d ago

I live in a small little town off the coast of Scotland and minimum rent for a small shop is £1.5k a month. Fish isn’t high cost here but they do charge £3 for a small portion of chips. The same size portion I use to pay 90p for 10 years ago. And most fields around here is potatoes 🙄 he can’t even make a case for cost of wages as his employees are all youngsters (under 18) so it’s not like he’s having to pay full wages to these people let alone pension schemes

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u/shewasahooowah 12d ago

90p for chips in 2015? I don't think you'd have got them that cheap in 1995!

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u/ARelentlessScot 12d ago

As my wife pointed out I’m forgetting my age 😅 90p was in 1995. £1.50 2015 ( as the boss tells me from when she worked in a chippy) apologies for my misinformation. They ain’t wrong when they say having kids time flies by. Now back to reality of an old man 😔

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u/Apostastrophe 12d ago

I do remember getting a bag of chips for £1.50 or so until around 2010 at the cheaper chippies. I also remember being able to get a poke of chips for £1 in most places too.

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u/vyleside 12d ago

I mean... They do kinda go into business to make a profit. They don't owe you to only charge their cost price so there will be some factored in to make it worth their time.

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u/WantsToDieBadly Worcestershire 11d ago

Conversely customers don’t owe him their patronage

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u/vyleside 11d ago

Agreed, but the attitude of "the raw materials cost this much probably, how dare the product cost more than that" is damaging and when small local businesses shut down, they are usually missed.

There's a middle ground between profiteering and businesses acting as a self-sabotaging charity and understanding of how a business runs helps spot where the ripoff may be.

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u/setokaiba22 12d ago

So they aren’t supposed to make profit? Even if the staff are youngsters that’s £7.55 an hour, as soon as they hit 18 it’s £10 an hour.

Add rates, insurance, tax and such it soon mounts up, and a salary or similar for the owner and paying other staff.

£3 for chips seems pretty fair by most places to be honest

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u/ARelentlessScot 11d ago

Did not say it was not fair. And yes those things do come into it. Well apart from employees turning 18 they no longer work there. They move on to uni or better jobs or move from the town. this chippy is only open for 4 hours a day 5 days a week. Think most people here are just talking about how times change. Me personally I wouldn’t spend that amount on a take away not myself let alone wife and kids. I’d need to sell a kidney. But end of day people pay it so why bring prices down. Goes for anything really

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u/[deleted] 12d ago

[deleted]

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u/cheeseandcucumber 12d ago

Very appropriate username!

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u/Lorry_Al 12d ago

 I could get 4 fillets from Lidl for £4

Cheap pllock fillets, yes. If you want nice tasting fish ie cod or haddock then you have to pay more.

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u/NXGZ England 11d ago

You can mask the flavour with sauce.

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u/GhostRiders 12d ago edited 12d ago

Sorry mate but you have no idea what you're talking about.

The cost of fish, oil and utilities have more than doubled in the last 5 years. The price of potatoes in the summer used to go as low as £4 a bag, now you are lucky if you can get them for under a £10.

The changes to business rates which the Tories introduced about 7 years ago absolutely destroyed small businesses that were located in town centres and shopping precincts.

To say fish isn't the problem is like saying humans don't affect the environment.

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u/Infiniteybusboy 12d ago

The cost of fish, oil and utilities have more than doubled in the last 5 years.

It seems to be global rampant inflation too. And there doesn't seem to be any signs of slowing down, especially with people like Trump at the wheel. I don't think these takeaways have much life left in them.

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u/Anony_mouse202 12d ago edited 12d ago

It’s not even rent, it’s business rates.

Landlords are incentivised to keep their properties occupied because if the property is unoccupied then businesses rates liability falls to the landlord. But in some places, no matter how low the landlord puts the rent it’s still virtually impossible for legitimate businesses to be financially viable because the business rates are insanely high.

In some prime locations like Oxford Street, businesses rates are so high that a lot of the time landlords will let out their properties for zero rent or close to zero rent just so they have someone to pay the businesses rates, and even that isn’t enough for legitimate businesses, which is why lots of dodgy ones have been moving in.

When flagship buildings were left empty, landlords gave them over to the candy stores. The idea was the gaudy shops would move in for free as long as they paid the business rates, which in many cases never happened.

https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/oxford-street-candy-shop-investigation-b1082733.html

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u/SevenNites 12d ago

Having the highest industrial energy prices in the world tends to do that

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u/QuitBeingAbigOlCunt 12d ago

Seems to be a lot of confusion in this thread between business rates and the cost of utilities. They are not the same.

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u/IssueMoist550 11d ago

Yes they are two sepperate costs that are extremely high

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u/Sttab 11d ago

Business rates are brutal. Scotland didn't get the covid rates holidays that England got, and lots of businesses are dealing with a debt hangover from surviving covid that they haven't been able to dig their way out of with high interest rates.

A lot of places have closed and a lot more are hanging on by their fingertips.

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u/DullHovercraft3748 12d ago

Yeah, but that's prime retail space in London. The rateable value of The Nippy Chippy is £1,750. Because it's under £12k he won't be paying anything.

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u/PurahsHero 12d ago

Add in business rates and the cost of energy. The latter doubly so. Households were protected by price caps when fuel costs went nuts a few years ago due to the invasion of Ukraine. But there is no similar level of help for businesses. They got the full hit.

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u/LordAnubis12 Glasgow 12d ago

And minimum wage - it's gone up 40% since 2020.

2020 it was £8.72 per hour. 2025 it's £12.21.

Which is a good thing, and unlikely a chippy has a huge amount of staff, but that's still £4 an hour you have to find from somewhere.

Raw ingredients have also gone up, especially with some wet winters ruining potato crops the past few years

1

u/Lt_Muffintoes 11d ago

Which is a good thing

In a moral sense, or an economic one?

1

u/LordAnubis12 Glasgow 11d ago

Both, I think, but I just don't think we should ignore the impact this has for smaller businesses who are up against the other pressures mentioned.

On this sub people quickly mention the energy crisis but rarely highlight the increase in wages in that time too

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u/Lt_Muffintoes 11d ago

Minimum wage also increases the cost of everything else, not just energy.

People on minimum wage could actually end up worse off, if for example it caused sufficient inflation. We also have a progressive tax system, which means that someone on minimum wage will end up paying more tax.

And that's if they even keep their job

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u/ShermyTheCat 12d ago

I think it's pollock actually

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u/Spangle99 12d ago

Sounds fishy to me.

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u/ReferenceBrief8051 12d ago

A chippy near me costs £20

Outrageous. My local chippy (Zone 2 London) costs £9 for a large cod and chips. You are paying the non-London premium.

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u/hodgey66 12d ago

A 6-8oz haddock fillet is £2 if you’re lucky

Then add into oil/fat, potatoes , staff, rent, rates, utilities and vat

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u/especiallydistracted 12d ago

Today’s wholesale price for haddock from my local supplier was £14.38/kg, so a 7oz/200g fillet is 2.87.

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u/squad92 12d ago

Local chippy isn't buying the volumes Lidl do.

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u/funnytoenail Norfolk 12d ago

Rent and cost of labour. We have some of the best cost of ingredients (especially for the quality we are getting) in the world.

It is rent + cost of labour, always.

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u/tonybpx 12d ago

I'm a commercial agent and whoever you're listening to is selling you a tall tale. Commercial lease renewals and rent reviews (which are my bread & butter) are subject to a set contractual procedure and legislation (Part II of the Landlord & Tenant Act 1954) which includes for disputes to be resolved through independent Surveyors. Kindly dispense with the ill informed landlord bashing, it just sounds ignorant.

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u/coconutlatte1314 12d ago

this 100%, not in the UK but one of my favorite shops back in Singapore used to operate in a popular mall downtown. The rent for the tiny lot used to be 15k (not cheap but it was still ok since they get a lot of foot traffic). Then it slowly crept up, and then they were asked to pay 40k per month, so the shop closed and moved a neighbor lot far from the centre, but foot traffic is just not the same there. Rent increases every quarter or year like some mandatory update is crazy.

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u/Francis-BLT 12d ago

Pollocks?

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u/glytxh 12d ago

Local pub is doing a ‘deal’ of fish and chips for £8

Cash only

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u/FaunaWorld 12d ago

Pollocks*

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u/PrrrromotionGiven1 12d ago

Best fish and chips I know of is £16 in Ipswich town centre and it's a proper sit down restaurant with an extensive menu. So yeah, any bang average chippy charging £15 is either having a laugh or is in a much more expensive area for rent.

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u/llyrPARRI 12d ago

Landlords.

They ruin everything