'Nail in the coffin' - Popular Sheffield chip shop moves to three-day week as owner voices concern for businesses amid price hike

The Cottage Chippy in Ecclesfield, Sheffield, has this week announced that they will be moving to a three-day working week due to the ‘catastrophic’ prices and ‘spiralling’ costs of ingredients.

The chip shop has been open now for around eight years and is run by husband and wife team, Liam Denn and Louann Denn. They have built the business up and it is now a really ‘popular’ fish and chip shop in the area.

Louann says they have always been able to pay their bills and have ‘got through any crisis’, including a potato price crisis, a fire which shut the business for four months, and also Covid-19 – however the current cost-of-living crisis has now forced the pair to move to a three-day working week.

“It is not just the energy bills, this all started when Brexit ended – we had a big problem with fishing rights,” said Louann. “Cod started to rise slowly from then, and last year we started to notice a difference every week with the bills going higher and higher and higher, to the point now where they are practically double what they were.

"That has a lot to do with the fact that Russia fishes most of the white fish for the whole world. There’s all sorts of excuses but the only thing that matters to me is that prices have doubled – but I can’t double my prices.”

Louann says that they have managed to ride out the huge increases in cod prices, but now the energy prices and the cost-of-living crisis is now the ‘nail in the coffin’.

The fish and chip shop will now open on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays only, scrapping the Tuesday and Wednesday work days where they usually experienced the least custom.

"I have been very nervous about losing custom on Tuesday and Wednesday, but we have informed all our customers and they’ve understood and I just hope we will be much busier on the days we are open.

"Business has been fine at the weekends, I can’t fault it, but we can’t put the price up high enough to cover the extra costing, it’s still not working – I’d have to sell it at £15 a portion if we were to make the profit we were before, but that’s testing everybody’s pockets at a time nobody has got money anyway.”

With all the costs increasing massively, Louann says she is now very concerned for, not just her business, but businesses in Sheffield in general.

"We are on a Facebook Forum with other catering people and the worry everyone is putting out there and the stress – people are in tears in their statuses and comments. People that have owned businesses for 30 to 40 years are having close down.

"We have never been in this situation before – I understand that so many businesses are the same. It’s kind of a perfect storm for us at a fish and chip shop as we have had a rise in prices on literally everything, from wrapping paper to peas. It is just blow after blow after blow.”

The Cottage Chippy can be found in Ecclesfield, Sheffield.