[Battered fish being fried inside the kitchen of Brockley’s Rock fish and chip shop in Lewisham, London]
[Cooked fillets of fish being stacked]
[Vinegar being poured on freshly cooked chips]
[Portions of fish and chips being carried to order collection point]
[Portion of haddock and chips with mushy peas, priced at £15.55]
[Cooked battered haddock fillet being torn open by hand showing flaky interior]
Kyri Karoulla (interview): “Since the Ukraine war, as we all know, prices have gone really high, and our gas and electricity have gone through the roof, about 300% more than we used to pay before. Obviously, that’s another huge challenge because at the time everything’s gone (went) up. Normally, we get one of the raw ingredients would go up a little bit up and down, but on that particular year, everything’s gone (went) up. We’ve never had anything like that before.”
[Haddock fillet being battered, prepared, and served with chips]
Kyri Karoulla (interview): “We cannot pass it on all to the customer. We have to absorb some of those costs ourselves. Otherwise, it’s easy for us to put the prices up. However, every time we put the price up, we lose customers. We lose a family around the corner, or a pensioner who’s been eating fish and chips all his life (who) can no longer afford it because the price has gone up.”
[Chips being fried and stored in ‘chip bin’]
Andrew Cook (interview): “It seems that every government choice is anti-business and the independents are less able to deal with those pressures. So, taxation and changing employment law. So that’s put pressure on the entire sector. And then on top of that, fish and chips have got a major problem when it comes to fish supply. We’ve had the Barents Sea quota there for Cod reduced. In 2019 it was a million tonnes total allowable catch. So that how much fish they’re allowed to pull out of the sea. This year it’s 285,000 tonnes. It’s around about a quarter of what it was in 2019. Compounding that, we’ve also got a better price for what’s called headed and gutted or H&G, which is cheaper for the vessels to produce because they need less crew, and they’re selling that for a higher price than they can do fillets coming into the fish and chip industries.”
[Exterior of Brockley’s Rock fish and chip shop]
[Kitchen staff at work]
[Menu board]
[Specials menu, featuring Norwegian saithe, priced at £10.95 for a regular portion with chips]
Kyri Karoulla (interview): “We introduced some alternatives, for instance saithe, which is a lovely tasting fish, and we added smaller portions as well, and the fish is flying out now.”
[Fish fillets being battered and fried]
[Fish fillet as seen through heated display case]
Josh Ashley-Smith (interview): “I like that it’s fresh, but I also like that it feels somewhat traditional. It feels like nostalgia and it feels like home and that’s probably why I’ll keep coming back and having fish and chips.”
[Chips being fried]
Paul Ray (interview): “It’s about £14, £15, whatever you have, roughly. If it gets to £20, then yeah, you (I would) stop coming, because it’s all right if it’s one of you. If you’ve got two children and a wife, then it comes to a lot of money.”
[Chips being boxed up]
[Fish being fried]
This script was provided by The Associated Press.