The Fish & Chip shop rules

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There’s a lot of talk in Australia about what makes a good Fish & Chip shop. It just so happens I know the answer to this question, and based upon this tweet by Heath, it has become clear I must share my rules right here.

Fish & Chip Shop rules:

  1. Cannot sell other food items which traditionally live outside of the Fish & Chip ecosystem. Namely pizza and kababs.
  2. Cannot be attached to another retail outlet such as a Milk bar. Must operate single business operation.
  3. Must have fish tiles on the wall.
  4. Must have wall poster of local fish population.
  5. Must wrap Fish & Chips in paper. Boxes are an unacceptable packaging material.
  6. Must not provide tomato sauce. Only salt and vinegar. Tomato sauce you have at home or go without. It’s just the way it is.
  7. Must sell pickled onions in a plastic tub on the counter, with the price written in a marker pen on the side.
  8. Must have traditional retro cans of beverage for sale in the drinks fridge such as Creamy Soda and Passiona.
  9. Drinks fridge must have a sign which says: “Please make selection before opening door”.
  10. Must make hamburgers and include a hamburger with the lot which has the options of beetroot, egg and pineapple.
  11. Hamburgers must be built on the grill while they cook by an expert burger cook.
  12. Must be run by hard working immigrant Greek family – the inventors & stalwarts of the local Australian fish & chip shop tradition.
  13. Must have home made chips from own potatoes. Frozen chips from bag are unacceptable.
  14. Must make potato cakes in house and dip in batter, just prior to dropping in deep fryer.
  15. Must provide both fired and steamed dim sims. These of course, must come from the frozen bag variety.
  16. Pricing board must be above the cooking fryers with prices written in chalk to allow for inevitable price inflation.
  17. Must have retro 1980’s arcade machine with a single game such as Galaga or Pacman.
  18. Must claim to be ‘local fish supplier’ of some random restaurant or pub in the local area.
  19. Must be located in working class area, preferably in the Western Suburbs.
  20. Should not be in obvious seaside location and counter intuitively be far away from waterway or estuary.
  21. Must be closed on Mondays.
  22. Must only be staffed by family members.
  23. Must have wide multi coloured plastic strip at door entry – to keep flies out.
  24. Must have cabinet at the front of the store window to display the ‘fresh’ fish.
  25. Must have semi inappropriate Chiko Roll poster on wall.
  26. Must sell ‘apple turnover’ oily apple pie with thick pastry.
  27. Must sell banana and pineapple fritters.
  28. Must wrap non-fried items in separate paper.
  29. Must use metallic industrial sized salt shaker to deeply cover chips in salt.
  30. Insert your rule here…. 

So why am I telling you this here on Startup Blog? Because sometimes the real innovation is about having the presence of mind to maintain a tradition in the face of change. While fish & chips might not be a thing where you live, I’m sure there is some kind of equivalent food or retail outlet. When change is the order of the day we can become worth talking about when we don’t change, or even bring back things of value which got lost along the way.

Leadership ironically, is sometimes about being a stalwart of the past.

Old world & customised – Rubble

A friend of mine is tremendous cook. It’s always a pleasure to eat at her house. At the end of every meal she gets the same comments about starting a cafe, restaurant or some type gourmet food business. As a startup evangelist I’m glad to say that time has finally come.

Welcome to RubbleHome baked goodness from Bec.

The launch product is  Homemade Gingerbread House which is that we expect to see in some Hollywood Christmas movie than on our dinner table this Christmas.

The thing I love about it the most is the ability to customize. I’m getting the family name ‘Sammartino’ on ours. Might even be a very cool thing to get your brand name on it or gift it.


WHAT: Large, gift wrapped, X-Mas Gingerbread Houses (see attached photos)
LIMITED OFFER: 50 only being made. First in best dressed!!!
HOW MUCH: $60 (COD)
WHERE: Collection from 42 Peers St, Richmond, but we can work something out if difficult.
HOW TO ORDER: Return email providing – name, contact number, quantity required, pick up date, personalised name of house (if wanted).
APPEARANCE & TASTE: You will say “Wow’ for both! But not too spicy for the children to eat.

* email your orders to (bunglik [at] gmail dot com)

You know you want one.

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New York Series: I like Dogmatic

I stumbled across this fast food place – good food quicky place in New York. It’s called Dogmatic, and they serve really nice gourmet sausages in bread. Really that’s all they do. Oh, and some some home made sodas.

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What I really like is how simple the back end of their outlet is:

  • They cook different types of sausages.
  • Put all of them in the same type of bread roll
  • The bread rolls which are hollowed out simultaneously on a hot bread pole.
  • You choose a sauce(gourmet of course) and off you go.

Not only is the consumer end  a great single minded proposition, the back end is too. Something few startups ever really recognize the benefits of.

Consumers only have 2 choices to make – Sausage type, and sauce flavour…. which are of the ilk of Pesto & Garlic – you get he picture. And so did I, so here they are:

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This is the type of food idea with has a replicable formula. And it doesn’t have to be in a major populous like New York to work. It could work in pretty much any city.

So the question for entrepreneurs is this: Which food category will you spin, change and own in your startup?

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New York Series: ‘Food Porn’ from Dean & Deluca

What is gourmet today, is mainstream tomorrow. We’ve already seen the gourmification (yes, I just made this word up) of products, including Chocolate, Yogurt, Soup, Coffee, Softdrink, Bread, and Ice-cream to name a few. So in the spirit of stimualting ideas for entrepreneurs, here’s yet another photo essay of the high end supermarket experience at the Dean & Deluca store in NYC.

It’s again clear that this photo set can do much more than more words:

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The question for young entrepreneurs is this:

Which category in a boring old supermarket can you re-invent?

Maybe you can show some of the old boring food conglomerates like Kraft & Nestle how out of touch they are with emerging consumers and ‘real’ food values.

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