Frankie’s scoops four accolades in national fish and chip awards

Frankie’s Fish & Chips in Brae is celebrating after making a clean sweep of awards at Thursday night’s National Fish & Chip Awards 2013 in London, organised by seafood authority Seafish.

The most northerly chippie in the UK, managed by John Gold, won the “From Field to Fryer Award”, “Staff Training and Development Award” and “The Amanda Seafoods Challenge Award” while Carlyn Kearney walked away with the prestigious “Young Fish Frier of the Year Award”.

Mr Gold said: “We’re all delighted and pleasantly surprised by our achievements at this year’s awards but all the staff have worked incredibly hard for the recognition.

“We have gone to great efforts to get our staff training programme to where it is today. For us, training and developing staff is a constant process involving polishing their skills and listening to customer feedback which is a number one priority for everyone within the business.”

Miss Kearney said: “I’m so happy to finally bag this award as I’ve entered for the last two years but third time’s definitely a charm.”

Every year I put a lot of effort into my role at Frankie’s and I love what I do – it feels great to be recognised as the best young frier of the year.

“Having met all those I was up against, it really was a tough competition so to be recognised is a huge personal achievement.”

Miss Kearney had to take part in a gruelling judging process which included testing the category finalists in their knowledge on matters including the preparation and cooking of fish and chips, health and safety issues and customer service.

The finalists also had to impress in a telephone interview before being invited to participate in a cook-off at the National Federation of Fish Friers Training School in Leeds.

Competing in the Amanda Seafoods Challenge Award, finalists were tasked with creating a new recipe, featuring Amanda Seafoods fish roe products. Frankie’s will now develop their recipe alongside Amanda Seafoods and will join the company at exhibitions to promote the new product.

Seafish chief executive Paul Williams said: “Frankie’s Fish & Chips are real testament of what hard work and effort can do for your business. They really have cemented their reputation as being a fish and chip shop to watch in the future.”