The Wether Forecast

Recently we visited the newly refurbished Wetherby Whaler (Wetherby branch). We were enroute to Harrogate for the Colbeck show, but we couldn’t resist the lure of a newly refitted shop and the famous Wetherby Whaler fish and chips!

The refit looks incredible. What was the timescale and how do you choose what time of year to do it to minimalise down time?

We closed at the beginning of the school holiday in February, not the best week to close but we were keen to make sure we reopened in time for Mother’s Day, also leaving a couple of weeks to iron out any unexpected last-minute issues before we headed into the busy Easter period.

What changes did you make to the building and fixtures and fittings?

Our aim was to improve our storage areas, the staff facilities, and make a proper kitchen area downstairs so that we could produce all of our homemade products on site. We have managed to achieve this with the limited space we have, including increasing the pan size of the frying range from 5 pans to a much needed 7 pan range. The restaurant has had a full refit, nothing structural but just fixture and fittings, we are really pleased with the results and the feedback has been great thus far. The takeaway has also had a facelift.

Whilst we were there the restaurant filled very quickly to its 75-seat capacity. How do staff cope with that?

There is always the expected uplift following refurbishment. We prepared the teams before reopening with some off-site training.

Whilst their main place of work was closed we also took them to work at some of our different restaurants, we do tend to have a quick turnover of seats in all of our restaurants, that’s the beauty of Fish and Chips. They can be cooked and served quickly, most of our tables have their food on the table a maximum of ten minutes after ordering.

Did you make any changes to the menu?

We are very traditional in our food, so we have only slightly changed the menu. We have a dedicated non gluten pan that we use vegetable oil as the frying medium in, so can now offer chips cooked this way if that is the customers preference. We now have the space to get a grill too to offer healthier grilled options to our customers. The biggest decision we made was to remove the slice of bread of butter that our restaurant customers received as part of their meal. As a company we couldn’t justify the wastage we saw from the bread coming back uneaten on plates, and then we have to put it in our bins and pay for it to get taken away. In this world of limited resources it just seemed crazy to continue in this way, we are really pleased that 99% of our customers have agreed with our policy, and are happy to pay for what any bread they want. We are rolling out this new policy at all of our other restaurants at the next menu review.

Having seven outlets is there a rolling calendar for updates and refits?

We budget yearly for planned refit expenditure. However, we did restrict spending through Covid, the uncertainty