Norway rolls out campaign to help UK fish-and-chip shops

The Norwegian Seafood Council (NSC) has launched a new educational campaign looking to help fish-and-chip shops around the United Kingdom better understand and communicate sustainability messages to customers.

The Norwegian Seafood Council campaign has begun with a three-part YouTube video series, “Fish and Tips: A guide to sustainable frying and business,” which aims to demonstrate the importance of sustainable fish and business operations. In addition to exploring fish origin and produce sourcing, the videos cover topics such as oil management, sustainable staffing, and customer communication and marketing.

The Fish and Tips videos show steps that operators can take to improve their sustainability credentials, and to start effectively communicating them to customers.

“This is all about transparency at sea, and for my business, this is an asset. For the Norwegians, their production is 100 percent above-board. I’ve seen it, and I can tell you how this fish is caught and how it is processed: all caught, processed, and frozen within six hours,” The Cod’s Scallops Owner John Molnar, who features in the videos, said. “This is renewable protein that I continue to feed my customers, and they want to know where it’s from. They are savvy, and we made them a promise years ago that we could even tell them which vessel caught it.”

The videos were created after a recent survey of fish-and-chip shop operators found that 88 percent of fish-and-chip shop owners considered the issue of sustainably sourced fish especially important. But the survey found but the majority of those surveyed struggle to communicate sustainability messages to their customers.

This survey was carried out by the NSC and the National Federation of Fish Friers (NFFF).

According to NSC, additional research has shown that only 24 percent of those who regularly eat fish and chips would know what to look for in a sustainable fish offering when visiting their local outlet, and 74 percent of U.K. residents want fish-and-chip shops to do more to educate them about the sustainability of the fish that they sell.

“Consumers should be aware that by purchasing from a sustainable shop, they are contributing to the future of our oceans and its fish stocks,” NSC U.K. Director Hans Frode Kielland Asmyhr said. “We’re very proud of the Fish and Tips initiative. We hope it will support operators throughout the industry to consider the origin of their ingredients, while also giving their customers insight about what goes into a typical fish-and-chip meal.”  

Photo courtesy of the Norwegian Seafood Council