There have long been claims that Levers in Oldham, or at least its predecessor, which was just down the road, was one of the first chip shops in the country. This is easily debunked, of course; the sit-in chippy in the centre of town only opened in 1991.
Where the legend has got a bit muddied is obvious - some of the very first fried potatoes in the land were plunged into hot oil in Oldham’s Tommyfield Market, to which Levers is attached. As the blue plaque on the wall outside the shop explains, ‘the first chips were fried in Oldham, around 1860, from which the origins of fish and chip shops and the fast food industries can be traced’.
Lees’ in Mossley down the road is rather more likely to hold that accolade, after Mr John Lees picked up on the frying of chips seen in Tommyfield and started his own shop on Stamford Street around 1863. A national cuisine, feeding us cheaply through world wars and economic turbulence, was born.
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But that is about to change. The clouds weighing heavily over Levers have rarely - if ever - been as dark and ominous as they are today. Only last week, the National Federation of Fish Fryers delivered an alarming message. In the wake of energy prices rocketing and nearly all the materials needed to bring together your chippy tea having doubled or more in recent months, the industry faces ‘extinction’. Not a word used lightly.
66% of chip shops have reduced opening hours to save money. There are now 35% tariffs on Russian white fish, due to the war in Ukraine, which has also caused the price of cooking oil to soar to levels never seen before.
Savvas Eleftheriou and George Gabrilatsou, with a loyal staff of 21 in all, run Levers, originally part of a consortium of 10 or so friends, all Greek-Cypriots, who chucked in a grand or so each to buy it from its former owner. The original shop they bought was in a row of shops near the old Victoria Market, which burned down in 1974.
When the area was redeveloped, they built this one off Tommyfield to replace it in 1991. It’s been a successful city centre chippy ever since, more than just a place to eat, a hub at the edge of the market and a place to take the weight off.
One by one, the consortium thinned, many heading back to Cyprus to retire, and now it’s just Savvas and George left. They still wear their white coats, with the Levers emblem emblazoned in red on them, with pride.
But the future of the place not only hangs in the balance because of costs, but also the redevelopment plans for Tommyfield and the Spindles shopping centre, which were passed over the summer and should be complete by the end of 2023. Where Levers factors in the new scheme depends on what the council will offer them to relocate, so there's that to worry about too.
Savvas, who looks a fraction of his 74 years (“He’s at the gym twice a week!” manager Adele Clayton tells me, “I can’t manage once, let alone twice!”), can appear a little gruff, and it feels like an achievement to make him smile. He’s obviously got a lot on his mind.
Though Adele says he’s a great boss, as she passes us busily, with an affectionate hand on his shoulder. She’s been at Levers for 27 years. It was her first job out of school, when she was 18. Her mum Irene also works here, and has for 26 years, as does her niece Kayleigh. The welcome is warm and friendly, the ease of family being together somehow contagious.
Savvas has been a fixture in the world of Oldham chippies and cafes since he arrived in the town in 1973, in his 20s, when he moved here from Cyprus. There were no jobs at home, so there was little choice but to try and make his own way in the UK.
“We’re gonna struggle,” he says. “Once the new prices come in, the gas and electricity.” We spoke before new prime minister Liz Truss’s pledge to put price caps in for businesses for six months, but how this will work for Savvas and George remains to be seen.
“So my fish. We’d get a 40lb case,” he says. “It was about £115. Now it’s £190. And that’s just one thing. All since the war started, it’s everything. We used to get oil, 20 litres for about £23 or £24. The last lot was £48.60.”
It was within weeks of the war starting that the rises began, and they just kept on coming, something he’s still finding hard to believe. A fried cod to take away is currently £4.70, up from around £3.90 last year. He really needs to be charging £6 minimum to turn a profit on it, but he can’t charge that. “That will be too much for people,” he says. “In a different area perhaps, but not here.”
“No chance,” adds Adele as she passes again, carrying cups of tea. “At £4.70, we’ve already had complaints. This is the biggest jump we’ve ever had to make. Before that the biggest mark up we ever had, way before the pandemic, was 20p. And we’re a lot cheaper than a lot of the chippies around here.”
So they took the decision to stop using sunflower oil and switch to palm oil. He says there's no difference in flavour, and he has to make savings somewhere. Prices have gone up, but he’s absorbing a huge amount - an unsustainable amount - himself. Even the palm oil has doubled in price from last year, and it also doesn’t last quite as long as sunflower oil before it has to be changed.
But it’s a short term win, and needs must. Everything else has gone up, from the paper the fish and chips come wrapped in to forks. “The only thing that hasn’t gone up is potatoes. We’re lucky because we’re busy, and we’re well known in the town,” he says. “This place always worked out, always did very well, even from when we started. We have to be careful putting prices up. People are struggling.
“The same people come in to eat, who would have fish and chips, but now they’ll share one between them. I’ve not seen that before. It’s going to be difficult, but we’ll have to wait and see. We’re hoping that a new prime minister, what they might be able to do for us. Not just for chippies, for the whole country.”
He doesn’t know how much his new electricity and gas quote will be. The current contract runs out in November, though some businesses have been reporting staggering, impossible increases. He and George hope that it won’t be too much of a hike because as it’s council-owned property, so they might be protected from anything too huge.
During the pandemic, Levers closed for around six weeks, and then started doing deliveries for the first time in its history, which helped see them through some challenging times. He and Adele would do the driving around themselves.
“If you’d told me a few years ago we’d be doing deliveries, I’d have told you that you were crazy,” he says. But they are still doing them now, and it’s become an important stream of revenue for them. It all seems deeply unfair. “We were just coming through the pandemic, just about levelling up, and then all this,” he sighs.
As we discuss the future of the chippy, Kayleigh overhears. “If you do sell it, I want it first!” she says, laden with plates. “I want first dibs!” He grins at her, but he looks wary too. “OK,” he jokes. While her entrepreneurial spirit is to be admired, caution would be advised right now.
“I’ve never known it like this,” says George, who is 78, sitting down with us. He’s run chippies for around 60 years. “Not this much. In 1963, when I had my first chippy, I put a penny on fish. It went from 11 pence to 12 pence. People said ‘You can’t do that! You’ll lose all your customers’. That was just one penny. But we’re worried. Worried about the prices, worried about this place and the situation. But we carry on.”
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