Dear Fellow Fish Frier,

At the AGM, held at Chesford Grange in Kenilworth, I was honoured to be elected as President of the National Federation of Fish Friers. The NFFF has undergone many changes over the past few years, it is now much more proactive and is now fit for purpose to protect and promote fish and chips going forward. I am very much looking forward to working with our new board, we all have the same passion for fish and chips and the same vision for the future.

I have been in fish and chips for 19 years now and have operated several shops in the northwest. My current shop is a takeaway near Chorley in Lancashire which I love. My shop is not what I would class as a high turnover shop, but it is a great place to work and I am lucky to have a great team around me enabling me to take the odd day off to perform my role for the NFFF. As we have a board of active fish friers, with varying sizes of businesses, I feel we have a great mix of business experience which means we understand the issues we all face running our businesses. I firmly believe that the NFFF is here to represent independent fish and chip shops, of all sizes, and the unique place we have in the nations heart.

One of the other things we would like to improve is our communication with members. We are involved in many things behind the scenes that benefit you and your businesses, but we are often quite poor at letting you know about it. We do a lot of work on legislation, doing our best to ensure new regulations do not create too much extra work which could be costly and unmanageable for our members. In January we learned about a news story that could have potentially caused a lot of bad press for us. We found out about it through a meeting attended by Hugh Mantle two weeks before it was released, giving us time to prepare and brief our members. Quite often we deal with media enquiries and, once we explain the facts, manage to prevent stories that could be damaging to us all. This is just a small part of what the NFFF is involved in and without the NFFF we would be much more fragmented as an industry.

The structure of the NFFF has also changed over the years, there are only a couple of area meetings that still take place, and whilst these are great, it is increasingly difficult to get people to attend as everybody has very busy lives.We are starting to send quarterly newsletters to members, which will contain information that is specific to your region as well as some national information. It will also give you the contact details of your Regional Director, please feel free to get in touch with them if you have any issues or suggestions.These newsletters form just the first part of the improvements we want to make It is your Federation so we want to ensure you know about what we are doing and for you to have the opportunity to contribute your ideas.

I hope you share our enthusiasm for the changes we are looking to make, this is just a brief overview but it will give you an insight into what we are trying to achieve. If you have any ideas or comments please feel free to get in touch using the email address below. There has been a lot of modernisation in the office and in the Training Academy, we think the changes we intend to make will help to modernise and streamline the organisation and make it feel more relevant to your business. We are here to help you now and ensure that fish and chips remains the national favourite dish for years to come.

Kind Regards

Andrew Crook

President – National Federation of Fish Friers

andrew@skippersfishbar.com