Kendal: Fish and chip shop owners still doing well despite price hikes

Data from the Office of National Statistics has revealed that the average price of fish and chips has jumped from £6.64 in January 2020 to £10.09 in January 2025.

Karen Badger, who runs The Jolly Fryer at Burneside along with her husband, told The Westmorland Gazette that price rises are becoming a regular part of running the business. 

“We’ve definitely been impacted by this, we’ve just had to put the price of our fish up. We used to just put the prices up once a year, or once every 15 months, but now it’s every few months. 

“It isn’t just the fish, the food price is going up in general. My husband has his own wholesale company that supplies us and he’s constantly looking for new suppliers. Every week he’s looking at what he can afford and what people will be willing to pay.”

Mrs Badger, who put the business up for sale in 2021, also shared that she is constantly looking for cheaper alternatives so she doesn’t have to offset the price rises on customers. 

“I think the rises are down to the way the world is at the moment, the war with Ukraine has had a big impact. We’re trying to offer cheaper alternatives, we’re selling other fish like Pollock instead of Cod and Haddock and that won’t be as expensive for customers.”

Despite the rises Mrs Badger admits that business is still good for the Burneside eatery. 

“The business is still making money, it’s viable. We get a lot of villagers and tourists coming by. We open four days a week, which is what we can manage. The business is up for sale, but that was not a financial decision, we’re still making money.”

Meanwhile, Edward Lodge, co-owner of Far Cross Chippy said that his business is doing extremely well despite increasing their prices.

“We have put prices up. I’ve been doing this for 18 years and we had incremental rises over the first 13 years or so, there’s been bigger rises and more regular ones recently. 

“The business is doing well, I once had a conversation with someone many years ago regarding price rises. I said, would you rather I change my product or would you rather pay a little bit more. I would say about nine out of ten customers will pay a little bit more because they want that consistency.

“People tend to get quite territorial about chip shops, so I think it would need to be a massive increase for someone to be put off.”

The rise in price of fish is something that has been a problem for the industry, but Mr Lodge thinks that potato prices are just as big an issue to chip shops. 

“It’s chips with everything in a chippy so really the price of potatoes, or perhaps the quality of potatoes, is what makes or breaks your business.

“I’ve run the business on the quality, not the price, but if you add that up and you’re paying three or four pounds per sack per week and you add that over the year, then you have to adjust prices accordingly to cover that cost.”