As much as 10 percent of the UK's 10,500 fish and chip shops face closure in the next 12 months because of a "perfect storm" of factors, including everything from high raw material prices and reduced quotas to economic effects linked to Brexit.
"The price is going skywards for a number of factors, Brexit has probably been one of those," Andrew Crook President of the UK's Federation of Fish Fryers told IntraFish. "It is quite scary at the moment."
After facing years of rising fish prices, the near doubling of potato prices this year has rubbed salt, if not vinegar, in fish and chip owners' wounds, amid a sharp fall in potato yields and poor crop standards with supplies from Europe in a year characterized by weather extremes.
