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Fish Friers

National Fish and Chip Day!

Article Date: 2018-06-06

It’s too soon to give any concrete figures in terms of media coverage received in the build up to, and on National Fish and Chip Day, but what we have seen are phenomenal results with national TV in the form of three live broadcasts on BBC Breakfast News and Coronation Street where our National Fish and Chip Day poster was proudly displayed in the Café!  National radio followed throughout the day on BBC Radio 2 with Sara Cox talking about fish and chips, and scraps or gribbles for most of the show!  Trevor Nelson followed suit and on the Thursday before National Fish and Chip Day we were delighted to hear Millers of Haxby as they made an appearance on the Simon Mayo and Jo Wiley Show in the ‘Line Up’ section of the show.  Talk Radio, Absolute Radio, Radio X, LBC and Magic all mentioned National Fish and Chip Day after they received deliveries of freshly cooked fish and chips to their studios!

In national print and online newspapers there were features and mentions in The Daily Mail, Daily Star, Daily Express, Daily Mirror, I, City AM.  There has also been some excellent consumer and supermarket magazine coverage with Tesco, Waitrose and Asda magazines and Woman’s Weekly and That’s Life, all featuring mentions.  Morrisons Supermarket ran a special offer in their instore cafes.

Regionally, both BBC and independent TV and Radio stations featured the day with live feeds from shops in their area and interviews with shop owners.  STV pre-recorded a film with L’Alba D’Oro in Edinburgh and Millers of Haxby recorded a piece with the local TV company.  The day also saw us reach a very new audience with a piece on Forces TV featuring our event with the Royal Navy at Her Majesty’s Naval Base in Portsmouth.  The Royal Navy also produced a special film, which included footage of Millers of Haxby, in recognition of the work that the Fishery Protection Squadron does to protect the fish stocks that are so important to our industry. 

Social media was at a whole new level in 2018 reaching number 1 on Twitter with a record number of tweets and trending on Facebook. This year also saw a huge increase in activity on instagram with more than 4,000 posts with the hashtag. This suggests increased engagement with a younger demographic.

Our London event was extremely successful with people queuing from 8am until 4pm to get their hands on award winning fish and chips from Craig and Nikki and their Kingfisher van outside Trinity House.  Visitors were entertained by a sea shanty group, relaxed in deck chairs and picnic tables and posed for photos with our seaside themed props while soaking up the London sunshine and terrific atmosphere.  Thanks go to Andy Malcolm from The Fisherman’s Mission, Andrew Crook from the NFFF and  Tony Ropke from KFE who, along with NEODA President, Ryan Baker and his better half - Dawn, and our friends from Friars Pride, were on hand all day long to help out.  Huge thanks to everyone involved.  Fabulous to see the Sustainable Restaurant Association and Seafood Norway come along to visit the event too.

Meanwhile in Portsmouth, Long John’s Fish and Chip van fed the crew of 3 of the Royal Navy’s Fishery Protection Squadron vessels - HMS Mersey, Forth and Tyne.  After his brilliant appearance on BBC Breakfast News, NEODA Vice-President, Gary Lewis from Silbury, was interviewed by Forces TV and Radio and a team from the local newspaper.  Thank you Gary for being such a star.   It was then time to thank the sailors for the work they do protecting the nation’s fish stocks.  Thanks again go to Alan Pearce from Kerry Foods and Nathan Pound from Friars Pride who came down to help.  This really was a great start to the day!

Our Route to London Relay was a great success with NEODA members, Middletons, Friars Pride, Henry Colbeck and Kerry Foods visiting as many shops as they could in the days leading up to National Fish and Chip Day – huge thanks to them for the long days and miles covered to get the buzz going before the big day.  There were some great photos on social media, but our favourite has to be the Angel of the North adorning the National Fish and Chip Day bunting!

Shops the length and breadth of the county pulled out all the stops to put on great events for their customers – special offers, competitions, brilliantly decorated shops – you name it, the shops did it!  We were delighted to be able to offer a magnificent prize to two fish and chips shops after the enormous generosity of the following NEODA members who contributed to our prize bundle – Seafish, KFE, AAK, BD Signs, Blakemans, Dempson, Flavoil, Isle of Ely Produce, Keejays, Kerry, Kerrymaid, M&S Catering Supplies, Middletons, Vandemoortele  and V A Whitley.  Congratulations to Mario’s Other Plaice and Gordon Bennetts who were our lucky winners!  Frying Nemo were also winners of our merchandise bundle which we send special delivery to arrive first thing on National Fish and Chip Day - they wore their t-shirts and caps with pride!  Thank you to every shop who went to so much effort to make the day an enormous success!

Many shops raised money for our charity partners who are very close to our heart, The Fishermen’s Mission, including Kingfisher raising money in London – we are yet to get a final figure on how much was raise, but it looks set to be a phenomenal amount.

There was a lot of excitement around the launch of the new 10p coin with shops using the F for fish and chips coin in competitions and everyone keen to get hold of one!  Have you seen one yet?

We spent two days in London delivering fish and chips to national radio and other media platforms. The lucky recipients in Central London were treated to a range of fried fish, including pollack, cod, haddock and fried halloumi for the vegetarians, all freshly prepared and fried by Poland Street’s, Golden Union fish and chip shop.  The Golden Union were fantastic partners to have on National Fish and Chip Day and went out of their way to help us make the deliveries run smoothly.  In fact on the Friday (1 June) the frier arrived at the shop at 4am to start prepping for the first batch of fish and chips scheduled to leave the shop at 7.50am. 

Meanwhile, a mile or so down the road, Jamie and the team at the award winning Mayfair Chippy were in early too, prepping for their delivery of fish and chips to be delivered to the BBC Radio London’s Breakfast Show.  Other shops in London used during the campaign were ‘FISH’ restaurant in Borough Market, Poppies in Camden Town and Britannia Fish Bar in Canary Wharf.

All in all it was a great day in London, the delivery team were dressed in National Fish and Chip Day baseball caps and t-shirts and received lots of attention by passers-by, some of whom even wanted their picture taken with the team

Lynda Simmons, Secretary General of National Edible Oil Distributors Association, the organisation behind National Fish and Chip Day says: “It is time to say thank you! I would like to thank all the NEODA members who made financial contributions prior to the day that enabled us to make National Fish and Chip Day even bigger and better than before, thanks to all those who worked so hard on the Route to London relay and to our friends at the Seafish Authority for their contribution which ensured we could give the event a big PR push – which as the results above show, has paid off”.

Same time next year everyone?!

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