00:18Fish and chips. It's a British staple. I've got a regular portion of haddock and chips
00:22in front of me and this currently costs £15.55. When this shop opened in 2011, it was around
00:28£5.90 and in 1989, the owners tell me it costs around £1.65. Now industry leaders say the price
00:36of fish and chips is currently the most expensive it's ever been. So what's behind that right?
00:41It starts with the fish itself. The National Federation of Fish Fryers say the amount of
00:46cod that can be caught, which is designed by governments, has fallen quite sharply. That
00:50essentially means less fish available. More of what's being caught is being sold into processing
00:56rather than fillets that fish and ship shops didn't use like this one. Wholesale cod has
01:01roughly doubled in the past 18 months to around £15 per kilo. And then there's also costs attributed.
01:10It's about £14, £15, whatever you have roughly. If it gets to £20, then yeah, you stop coming.
01:18Because it's, you know, like, it's alright if it's one of you. If you've got two children and a wife,
01:25then it's like, it comes to like a lot of money.
01:28Since the Ukraine war, as we all know, prices have gone really high and our gas and electricity have gone
01:38through the roof about 300% more than we used to pay before. And obviously that's another huge challenge
01:46because at the time everything's gone up. Normally we get one of the raw ingredients will go up a little
01:53bit up and down. But on that particular year, everything's gone up. We never had anything like
02:00that before. We cannot pass it on all to the customer. We have to absorb some of those costs ourselves.
02:07Otherwise, you know, it's easy for us to put the prices up. However, every time we put the price up,
02:13we lose customers. Our fish and chips have got a major problem when it comes to fish supply.
02:18We've had the Burren Sea quarter for corn reduced. In 2019, it was a million tons total allowable catch.
02:25So that's how much fish they're allowed to pull out of the sea. This year it's 285,000 tons. It's
02:36got a better price for what's called headed and gutted or H&G, which is cheaper for the vessels
02:41to produce because they need less crew. And they're selling that for a higher price than they can do
02:46fillets coming into the fish and chip industries. So how are shops responding? Well, this shop is
02:51offering smaller portion sizes and alternative cheaper fish options too. It offers safe at £10.95 a portion,
03:00a lot cheaper than haddock or cot. But the priority owners say is to keep this meal, this humble meal
03:06accessible. While costs are rising, fish and chips remains a defining part of British culture.
03:14Soło Physicology is unoperated for the food supply of fish available.
03:16So now it's a food supply of fish. And I've been doing it for a while.
03:16but I've been doing it for a while and I'm doing it for 20 years.
03:21I'm doing it for a while.
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