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One day in 2007, Darren Sudlow drove past the old stationmaster’s house at Padgate station, in Cheshire, noticed it was empty and decided to lease it. “He just fell in love with the place,” says his son, Kieran, who was 11 at the time. “He said he always wanted a fish and chip shop, for some reason.” Despite having worked as a joiner up to that point, Darren made a go of it, and the Plaice Station, as he named it, was a success from day one. “He worked like mad to get it open and then realised that the hard work hadn’t even started, and he had a queue out the door,” says the younger Sudlow.
The family lived nearby. Kieran Sudlow, who is now 30, worked at the Plaice Station as a boy, peeling potatoes, washing dishes after school, then cooking at the range when he was 16. He went on to become a chef, working in Australia for a few years, then returning to help out at the chippy part-time when needed. Business had always been pretty good. They won local awards and had a loyal customer base. But one day in March, Kieran remembers, his father came in and told him: “‘I think the fish and chip shop’s going to go.’ He said, ‘It’s not making money. I can’t see it carrying on.’”
In April, after 19 years, the Plaice Station served its last customer. In a Facebook post, Darren Sudlow explained that the closure was the result of multiple pressures: “Soaring fish prices, reduced fishing quotas and political issues around the world, relentless demands on VAT among other ever-increasing expenses, effectively destroying any profit margins remaining. Truth is, the product of fish and chips itself is facing its toughest battle.”
Chippies across the UK are feeling similarly pessimistic. According to research carried out in May by the National Federation of Fish Friers (NFFF), 47% of them were “extremely worried” about the future of their business, and a further 30% were “slightly worried”. About 20% of them planned to quit in the next 12 months. Many have already shut in recent years. There are still 7,000-8,000 chippies in Britain, down from a peak of 25,000 in the 1930s, but the number of outlets, and the number of servings, are shrinking weekly. The big chains are also feeling the pressure: Deep Blue, which owns the historic Harry Ramsden’s brand, shut down nine of its restaurants last summer.
Customers cannot have failed to notice the problem. The average price of takeaway fish and chips has gone up more than 60% in the past five years, from about £7 to £11.43 – a faster rise than other takeaway foods. A family of four would now pay nearly £50 for their meal. “It’s a fair chunk of money and I think it’s shocked people a little bit,” says Andrew Crook, president of the NFFF. “So they cut back on the number of visits, so volumes are going down as well.”
Crook has been feeling it himself; he runs two chippies in Lancashire, and has been in the trade for 27 years. The recent hot weather has been good for coastal outlets, but “if you’re inland, nobody wants fish and chips”, he says. It’s been a hard summer for shops like his. “It’s not a very pleasant place to be when it’s hot, and it’s quiet as well. The night drags, and it can be 40-50C in the shop.”
These are difficult times for UK hospitality across the board, but chippy owners have it particularly tough, Crook explains. For starters, they’re beholden to the costs of a very small set of basic ingredients. Fish prices have risen astronomically in recent years, especially cod and haddock. The cod quota in the Barents Sea, where most of the fish comes from, has gone down from about 1m tonnes in 2020 to just 285,000 tonnes this year, according to Undercurrent, a seafood industry data company. Inevitably, this has pushed up prices. “For an 18kg case of cod [fillets], I was paying something like £160 three years ago, and I’m now paying £330,” says Crook. Haddock quotas are slightly less affected, but the scarcity of cod has created a knock-on demand, again affecting prices.
The Ukraine war has also had an impact on the industry (hence the “political issues” Darren Sudlow was referring to). The Barents Sea is jointly managed by Norway and Russia, but in May 2025, the EU sanctioned two Russian fishing companies, Murman SeaFood and the giant Norebo JSC, over alleged surveillance and sabotage activities. That has disrupted the whole supply chain, again raising prices.
Potato prices are also likely to rise: after the heatwaves and droughts, this year’s European harvest will be one of the worst on record. Even cooking oil prices are going up. Then there are energy costs: the range has to be kept hot, and a lot of freezing and refrigeration is required. And the equipment is not cheap: a new frying range can cost upwards of £10,000.
On the administrative side, chippies have been hit hard by recent rises in VAT (it returned to 20% in April 2022, after a temporary reduction during the pandemic to 5% and then 12.5%), business rates, the minimum wage and mandatory sick pay. The government has been putting in relief measures – lowering business rates for pubs and clubs in England, capping VAT on children’s meals over the summer – but none of this benefits chippies, says Crook. “So it does feel like we’re being run by our business now, rather than running the business. It’s taken a lot of the fun out of it for many.”
All of these factors hit the Plaice Station, says Kieran Sudlow, squeezing margins tighter and tighter. VAT was the last straw. Like many small businesses, the firm was paying a flat rate of 12.5% to the government, but in 2025 its accountant warned it was approaching a limit: if the business’s annual turnover exceeded £230,000, the flat rate would no longer apply. “So it was going to cost us tens of thousands of pounds.”
The only option was to earn less money. The Sudlows made the painful decision to temporarily close. “As strange as it sounds, we made more money by closing for three weeks than if we’d just stayed open,” Kieran says. In order to justify leaving the flat rate scheme, they would have had to turn over an extra £2,000 a week. “After 19 years, you know where you are with your business. You can’t just find an extra two grand a week.”
Closing down was a demoralising experience. “I felt we were doing everything we could to make the products as good as possible. But then all that work that you’ve done to grow your business is ripped out from under your feet.”
There’s another factor at play here: changing tastes. Fish and chips has been facing stiff competition from other takeaway options: pizzas, burgers, fried chicken, Indian, Chinese, Korean – most of which use much cheaper ingredients. Deep-fried foods are also losing popularity for health reasons, since they contribute to obesity; the government recently banned them from schools in England.
Fish and chips is a great British institution, but the origins of the dish are not all that deep, or that British. The technique of coating fish in flour and deep-frying it is thought to have been introduced by Jewish immigrants from Spain and Portugal in the 17th century, but fish and chips only caught on commercially in the mid-19th century (starting in either London or Lancashire – it’s disputed). In the days before British cuisine opened up to international influences, it was one of the few convenience foods. It was also one of the few meals not rationed during the second world war, further cementing its patriotic connotations.
One chip shop owner in his 80s (who did not wish to be named, as he is in the process of selling up) recalls starting out in the business in his 20s, in a small town in the north of England. “It was pretty busy, because in those days there was only your chip shop and your butcher’s and your pie shop,” he says. For most of his career it was a good way to make a living. His wife and children helped out in his shops and they often lived above the premises. But it has been tougher in recent years, he agrees, and he’s struggling to find a buyer for his business. Today’s establishments don’t look that different from the ones he started out in: “They’re more modern and very good-looking, but other than that, they haven’t changed. They can’t, because you can’t change the way you cook fish and chips.”
The unchanging nature of fish and chips is both its strength and its weakness. Kieran Sudlow had begun to notice the dish falling out of fashion: “You’ve got a very ageing market – your traditionalists, your mums, your dads, your nans, they grew up on fish and chips. But we could see clear as day, and especially now with online orders and social media posts, your 18- to 35-year-olds, that younger bracket that’s your next generation of customers, they’re not interacting. They’re not coming through the doors.”
A lot of chippies have tried using different, cheaper fish, such as hake, plaice, rock or spurdog (types of dogfish), or even tilapia, a freshwater fish farmed in southeast Asia. Many chippies claim customers would not be able to tell the difference, but we’re wedded to cod and haddock. Other chippies have expanded their menus to include items such as calamari, fishcakes, fried chicken, sausages, kebabs or loaded chips.
Sudlow decided to change tack entirely. Three months after the Plaice Station closed, he reopened as Between Bread, a high-end sandwich shop. The fare is a cut above: he uses locally sourced “shokupan”, or Japanese milk bread; fillings include braised beef with chipotle sauce, and spicy tuna and avocado; prices are between £8 and £12. He did his homework, researching food trends and visiting similar establishments around the country. Business is great, he says – turnover is “much higher” than when it was a chippy ((justifying that VAT change), and the shop is popular on social media and with young people. He also gets to be a bit more creative as a chef. Does he miss the chippy days?
“Personally, no,” he says. “It got to a point at the end where it really was like fighting. It’s an expensive product to buy in nowadays and even harder to sell. Staff training is a nightmare: how many people do you know that go, ‘When I grow up I want to cook fish and chips’? It’s a part-time job; staff turnover’s horrendous. It’s a hard business to have.”
But the great British chippy is not to be written off just yet. Cod and haddock quotas are expected to increase 10% next year, says Undercurrent, which could help reduce prices, and the UK government is facing increasing pressure to deal with the VAT problems plaguing the hospitality industry.
Most importantly, perhaps, a new generation is embracing the chippy tradition and breathing new life into it – not necessarily by totally transforming it, but by doing it simply and well. The Scrap Box, outside York, is one such example: it won best takeaway this year at the NFFF’s National Fish & Chip awards.
The Scrap Box was founded 12 years ago by brothers Aman and Gavin Dhesi, aged 37 and 33. Sons of a local off-licence keeper, they studied politics and economics at university, respectively, but then decided to open a chippy together. “It was pretty much on a whim, to be honest,” says Aman. “I was never proud to be doing fish and chips and never felt like it was really me.” After Covid, the brothers reached a crossroads, he continues. “It was like – do we do something else, do we sell out, or do we really double down and go on a journey to try to make sure we can improve every single aspect of the business?”
They went on the journey, researching every aspect of the trade and its history, carefully sourcing their supplies and “letting our ingredients do the talking”: their fish comes from Iceland and is Marine Stewardship Council-certified; they fry in beef dripping from Ireland. There’s no secret formula, Aman says. The fish is lightly seasoned; the batter is just flour and water and a bit of natural colouring, applied as thinly as possible. Nothing artificial is added. “The main thing is, it needs to be made often, as opposed to just all done in the morning, so that it retains its bubbles and you still get your spikiness. And it wants to be cold, so that when it hits the oil, it has a bigger reaction – you get a nicer texture.”
When I visit on a Friday night, the Scrap Box – a roadside hut on a layby that used to be a council toilet block – is buzzing: six or seven people cooking at a huge range; a constant bustle of customers. The menu is classic: haddock and chips for £11.95, cod and chips a pound more, sides like curry sauce and mushy peas, a few non-fish options. And the food is everything you’d want it to be: the fish fresh and succulent, the batter crisp and light, the chips hot and sog-free.
At the end of the shift, Gavin tells me they’ve done about 650 portions that night. The award has raised their profile. They’ve just returned from a trip to see the fishing in Iceland, he says, and they’re about to go to Japan, where they’re doing pop-up stores in three cities. “There’s been so many opportunities – that’s kept us stimulated and excited.” They’re also looking at opening a branch in London, Aman says: “We want to bring the best of the north to the south.”
Despite the union-jack-waving seaside cliches, what makes fish and chips quintessentially British is that it’s interwoven with our history of immigration and internationalism, says Aman, whose family has Punjabi roots. It is often immigrants who have run British chippies, he points out: Italians in Scotland, Chinese in Liverpool and the north-west of England, Indians and Pakistanis, Greeks and Turks. The fish recipe came from Sephardic Jews in Portugal; the potatoes often come from central Europe (via South America); the fish comes from Iceland and Norway.
There are other outlets doing similar things to the Scrap Box around the UK. In Nottinghamshire the Cod’s Scallops (corny names come with the territory) includes fresh fish counters in its outlets; in Oxford Harrisons’s Fish & Chip Co has been diversifying its menu with a range of British fish. There are new young proprietors of established family chippies trying new things, and there are food trucks and mobile chippies such as Frosty’s in Northumberland keeping prices down by minimising their premises.
So maybe there’s life in the old chippy yet. “I do think the better shops will survive and prosper,” says Aman Dhesi. “But it’s never going to die out.” Gavin agrees: “I think we need to hark back to just how pure a dish it is, how great it is. And when you think about it, for where it’s come from and the work that’s gone into it, it’s still a bargain.”
