Fish and chips – but better!

You might not expect to find a cutting-edge approach to fast-food carry-out in the depths of rural County Antrim, but chip-lovers in the village of Ahoghill, near Ballymena, are relishing the arrival of a family-owned business with a radical new approach to this most traditional of trades.

Stewart Frew’s eponymous new take-away opened its doors in the village in March in premises known to locals for many years as The Village Fryer.

This new venture wasn’t Stewart’s first foray into the busy fast-food sector. He used to own The Chippy take-away in nearby Antrim, which he sold on after 14 years in 2001.

But it’s his long-running career as an independent fast-food consultant and innovator that has led to Stewart’s trailblazing approach in the new take-away.

He runs the Ahoghill shop in partnership with his daughter, Nicola, but he’s also worked for many years on a consultancy basis with a succession of clients, including the Kerry Group and the renowned Beshoff Brothers fish and chip chain in County Dublin. He spends much of his time training new fryers and demonstrating the effective use of the full range of fast-food kitchen equipment, but he has also found the time to develop many of his own batter mixes and food coatings.

By his own admission, he’s obsessed not only with the product itself but with the best and healthiest way in which fish and chips – and everything else on the menu – can be cooked.

Speaking to NR this month, Stewart revealed that while his passion for fast food goes back many years, he really began to focus on modern, health-conscious cooking about a decade ago:

“I just started to see things with different eyes,” he recalled. “About 95 per cent of the fish and chip shops in Northern Ireland still fry in beef dripping or lard, but I’ve been involved with the Beshoff Brothers in Dublin on a consultancy basis and they do their frying in vegetable oils, which is a much healthier approach.”

His experience with the Beshoffs was enough to convince Stewart of the benefits of cooking in vegetable oil – not only is it better for the customers’ health, but it can be argued that the end product is crispier, tastier and much more visually attractive.

Stewart has been frying in vegetable oil since the Ahoghill take-away opened its doors in March. He was prepared for the possibility of a customer backlash and ready to revert to more traditional methods if necessary, but in the event, customers have been delighted with their new chippy:

“Business has been great and we’re over the moon about the way that local people have taken to what we’re doing,” said Stewart. “The feedback we’ve been getting has been well above expectation.”

Stewart Frew bought The Chippy take-away in Railway Street, Antrim town in 1987. The shop won at the National Fish and Chip Show Awards twice and was runner-up once between 1991 and 1993, and although Stewart sold the business on in 2001, it is still trading very successfully – and winning awards – today.

Although he then got involved in the commercial and residential property business for a number of years, he maintained his interest in foodservice and worked as a consultant for a number of notable clients, including the Tralee-based Kerry Group.

The Frew family was also involved in convenience retail, launching a Spar store in Antrim town in 2003 – which they ran for four years – and a Vivo in Ballymena in 2006, which was also subsequently sold on.

The opportunity to get involved again in fast-food in a customer-facing capacity arose earlier this year when The Village Fryer in Ahoghill closed its doors. Stewart owned the premises on Main Street from which the business operated:

“We had a decision to make,” he explained. “Do we just rent the property out again or do we go back into business for ourselves?”

Stewart’s daughter, Nicola, with whom he had previously worked in the family’s convenience stores business, had taken a year out during 2013. He knew that she was job-hunting and so the pair decided to go into partnership with a new fast-food outlet in the village.

Although the shop –which also provides sit-in facilities – got a complete make-over, Stewart has further plans to enhance the service. Within the next few weeks, he hopes to install a brand new range of high-tech frying equipment sourced from Holland.

He believes that the Dutch system will take food at the shop “to a new level”. The new equipment will allow freshly cooked food to be displayed on an open shelf under lights, rather than in a heated Perspex box as is usually the case. This is visually much more appealing for customers, who see the food as they stand in the queue.

The new equipment will also heat the cooking oil electrically – which takes less of a toll on the oil than more traditional methods – and because the heating element is inside the oil in the pans, any crumbs or carbon from the food will fall under it and reduce the propensity for cooking oil to burn.

“As we go forward, I want everything that we do to have a health benefit or a cost benefit for our customers, or for it to give them a better product,” added Stewart. “We’re not really looking to be the cheapest in the world, but we do want to have good food and we want to be healthy, that’s really my mission statement.

“I am really driven by making sure that people are benefitting and getting really good food. Fish and chips shouldn’t be seen as this nasty, unhealthy food and we shouldn’t be sneaking around and trying to bluff people. They should have a balanced diet and this can include fish and chips.”

When it comes to the menu itself, there’s little to set Frew’s apart from any other fish and chip shop in the country – Stewart says that preferences haven’t changed in 30 years and 90 per cent of his customers are still after a good burger or a sausage supper.

Innovation is important in other areas, however. Things like packaging matter, particularly to young people, and having a good range of tasty sauce and dips makes the difference:

“It’s all about the look”, remarked Stewart, “because people eat with their eyes. You also need to be very conscious of the cleanliness level of your shop and we go to great lengths to make sure that we are on top of that.”

Going forward, however, Stewart is looking to develop two areas of the business that will certainly set it apart. He wants to introduce his own branded range of gluten-free food and he’s keen to open his own training school at the Ahoghill take-away:

“This would be where people can come in for a day or two to get trained up. I’ve been doing this myself, going to people’s permises and training staff, for some time, but I can definitely see the benefits of people coming to me instead.”

As for the future, Stewart isn’t sure about any new outlets – he’s not willing to rule that out completely – but says that he is much keener to develop sales of his own range of goods – including gluten-free products – to other fast-food operators and retailers around the country.