A Suffolk fishmonger who launched his business during the pandemic says he is now drawing customers from the far ends of the county and beyond.
Mike Warner spent years writing about seafood and the people who fish the UK's shores. He ran a consultancy advising chefs, hospitality businesses, the media and government about British seafood having built up a huge knowledge of the industry.
But when contracts ended and work dried up because of the pandemic he decided to launch a wholesale business using his fishing industry contacts to supply bass to the London market. He then developed a retail operation at Grange Farm Shop Hasketon, near Woodbridge. The business is thriving and is now 50/50 wholesale and retail.
"All my work just dried up so I had to do something," he explained. "I started working with our local guys at Felixstowe Ferry. I started selling into London to guys I knew well."
The wholesale business grew and he started selling a more diverse range of seafood including lobsters and turbots, and using more and more of his contacts around the UK.
After launching a successful pop-up shop at Grange Farm Shop, he set up a permanent retail outlet there operating five days a week.
He sells locally-caught fish from off the Suffolk coast and from fishing vessels all around the country that he knows.
He is keen to revive UK consumers' relationship with seafood and get them to venture beyond what he terms the "infamous five" of cod, haddock, tuna, prawns and salmon and appreciate the rich variety fished off UK shores in a responsible and seasonal way.
Off the East coast these include Dover sole, skate, rock eel, wild bass, whiting, grey mullet - and herring, which was once an east coast staple.
When holidaymakers go to destinations such as Spain they often unknowingly eat British seafood - and will sample produce there that they never touch at home. He would like to reverse a perverse trend which means that while the UK exports about 80% of the seafood it catches, the seafood UK consumers buy here is 80% imported.
But while many of the species the UK exports are prized abroad there is no market for them here, he said.
"It's cultural," he explained. "Consumers are very unaware of what happens over the horizon. They have no idea what happens once they (fishing boats) leave port."
Herring populations in the North Sea have bounced back after being over-fished for many years and fish such as these provided "carbon-neutral protein", he said.
The popularity of his fishmongers shop at Woodbridge appears to be proving there was still an appetite for seafood here.
""We started in our permanent home here in June last year and it's grown steadily ever since," he said. Customers come from Bury St Edmunds, Cambridge, Sudbury, Felixstowe and Colchester.
Mike is now looking forward to staging A Passion for Seafood stage at the Aldeburgh Food and Drink Festival at Snape Maltings on September 24 and 25. He will be joined on the stage by chefs including Cyrus Todiwala and CJ Jackson as he tries to encourage more people to give seafood dishes a try.
"I'm just incredibly excited," he said of the event. "This is a culmination of what I have been doing over the last 10 to 15 years."
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