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Fish Friers

Sustainable success for Skippers Fish Bar

Article Date: 2016-06-21

Award-winning Skippers Fish Bar in Preston is delighted to have gained MSC certification for their shop, achieved by piloting a new online application process via a new joint partnership between the National Federation of Fish Friers (NFFF) and the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC).

Andrew Crook, the owner, has been running Skippers Fish Bar for over a decade and it’s the first fish and chip shop in Chorley to be certified; "More and more customers are concerned about the provenance of the food they eat, they are also concerned about the environment and fish stocks. By becoming MSC certified it allows me to demonstrate that they can eat fish and chips from our outlet with a clear conscience!”

For Andrew, fish and chips has been in his family for some time; "My great uncles were fishermen and sailed out of Fleetwood! 

One of my great uncles was sunk by a U boat off Mull in 1939 and his name appears on the Monument on Tower Hill in London.

Andrew has a great background in fish and chips, with two generations of his family working in the business. "I had been around my parent’s fish and chip business since I was 9 years old so it was a natural progression for me really.” After finishing his degree in 1999, Andrew turned down a programming job at British Aerospace to join the family fish and chip shop.

Skippers is certified for MSC cod, haddock and plaice and makes homemade fish cakes and fish bites using certified cod, for those with smaller appetites. The fish bar sources Frozen-At-Sea (FAS) MSC certified fish, as the travel logistics for supplying wet fish make it inconsistent for their use.

Skippers Fish Bar is a NFFF Quality Award holder and found the new online auditing process for their MSC certification easy to complete. "

I would encourage all Quality Award holders to add MSC certification - it is very important that we show that great fish and chips can be consumed with a clear conscious.”Since its certification and use of the blue MSC ecolabel, Skippers has become known for its certified sustainable status, and Andrew has found that his business has benefitted from a wave of interest generated by customers and social media."We have had lots of activity on social media surrounding our certification, the promotional materials supplied by MSC are fantastic, creating a lot of discussion in the shop.
There certainly are people out there that don^t think they can eat fish and chips due to limited fish stocks. With MSC certification we can provethat our fish and chips are sustainable.”"Congratulations to Skippers and the team on their MSC certification! They have found the new online process via the NFFF very straight forward and are already experiencing the benefits! The MSC’s blue ecolabel is reassuring for customers looking to enjoy Skipper’s tasty, traceable and certified sustainable fish.”

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