First day as fish and chip shop owners

Your first day as fish and chip shop owners should be one to remember! You are excited and nervous all at the same time. The adrenaline makes you slightly hyper active, resulting is rushing around from job to job.

Many companies do not celebrate the opening of a new fish and chip shop or a change of management. They just see it as one day of many. Their view will be why make a fuss?

If that’s you, we respect your reasons and there is no need to read on. If you want it to be a day to remember, hopefully you will find a few ideas below.

Plan, Plan, Plan

• Write down your plan, there is a much higher chance you will achieve your plan if it is documented.

• Keep a list of all the things you need to do. Break the list down into sections like recruitment, health/safety, suppliers of food produce, equipment training, chip shop refurbishment, finance and legal.

• Buy more than enough food and beverage produce. Did you hear the story about the ‘easyFoodstore’ (associated to Easyjet.) All products are 25p per item. On their first day, they sold out quickly and the shelves were empty, shoppers left disappointed. It may have been a deliberate PR stunt or a complete disaster. Regardless, they could have sold a lot more!

• Focus on the detail. A customer will not recognise one small issue, but multiple problems will leave a negative impression with them. We used to go to an Indian restaurant in Amersham. The company who produced the menus spelt the restaurant name wrong. As opposed to getting them done again correctly, they used the menus with the error. We can only assume the Indian restaurant did this as they were given the menus for free. If you do not care about your reputation, will you care about basic food hygiene?

Training and Customer Service

I was in a restaurant the other day near our office in Leicester. The lady who served us was very nice but she could not pronounce the names of the red wines and could offer no suggestions. We settled for the cheaper house wine alternative.

In summary, make sure your team have been trained and understand the importance of customer service. Please read more about Customer Service in our recent guide, Providing the best customer service in a fish and chip shop.

Our team are on hand to help out with any questions you have. Please just call 01494 611 456 or email hello@fishfryerfinance.co.uk for more information.

Thank you for your interest, good luck with your new business.