Anthony Sykes has grabbed the opportunity to maximise his business in Swinton, Manchester and has recently extended his shop to include a restaurant with a new expanded menu. Whilst the build hasn’t been a smooth one, the result is a dining area and menu that matches the high quality of his fish and chip takeaway.
‘We own the business next door and have been renting it out for 10 years but after numerous unreliable businesses renting there, we decided to knock through and expand,’ Anthony explained. ‘It took 18 months of hard work but we’ve only been open 5 weeks and I can already say that it’s been worthwhile. Whilst the building work was being done we did encounter unforeseen issues but it was nothing that we couldn’t deal with. In fact at one point we had to create a tunnel for the customers to come into the takeaway whilst the scaffolding was up on the front of the building and it created a bit of a party atmosphere! Our customers were really supportive and kept on wishing us lots of luck.’
The menu has been extended along with the seating area and Anthony has been as meticulous about where he has sourced the products for the new items as he has been for his fish and chips: they have their very own blended coffee and their bacon and sausage has been specifically sourced to make their full English Breakfast stand out from the crowd.
‘We realised that to maximise the business a great opportunity would be to offer breakfast before the chip shop opened at 11:30 and it’s proven to be a popular choice.’ Putting a twist on the normal breakfast offering, Anthony has included options that you wouldn’t see in standard cafes such as treacle bacon in a brioche: ‘Treacle bacon is becoming more popular especially with celebrity chefs and we thought it would be a great addition to our menu. The brioches are made specifically for us and we have sourced the bacon specially.’
All the work has proved to be worthwhile and they’re getting great feedback from their customers: ‘Our customers are asking where we get our product from as they can tell it’s really good quality which is a great compliment!’
Have a read on what Anthony had to say after his Florigo was installed here.