Millers located in Haxby is a long standing family business currently run by father and son team, David and Nick Miller.
The Miller family and Fish & Chips goes back 75 years with Davids Father and Grandfather owning multiple Fish & Chips shops, Haxby being one of their favourites.
After training and working as a chef on the QE2, David joined the family business in 1987 taking over the Haxby shop from his father Jim. In 1989 he replaced the existing frying range with a Florigo and doubled the shops turnover. When asked why he chose Florigo all those years ago, David simply states “there was nothing else like it on the market”. The Florigo range remained an integral part of the Millers family business for 27 years!
Nick Miller spent his youth growing up within the fish and chip industry but his passion was music and he spent 10 years working as a musician. When he covered at the shop for his father for a few weeks, he really enjoyed himself and started making notes on all of the improvements that his father could make. When David returned and Nick went back on the road, all he could think about was the business and how it was getting on. In 2015 he decided he wanted to join his father at Millers, a decision which was welcomed by David.
In January 2016, Nick was invited as a guest of Henry Colbecks to attend the National Fish and Chip Awards. Nick was so blown away by the event that as soon as he got back to the shop, he told David that he wanted Millers to enter and be a part of the event in 2017. Millers were already an integral part of the Haxby community and 2016 saw an overhaul of the business along with their entry into the 2017 awards in the Independent Takeaway Fish and Chip shop of the year category.
Massive changes started to take place in addition to what Millers already supplied the community;
Refurbishment of the shop
Brand new Frying Range
MSC certification
Staff Training providing real qualifications to staff
Bistro evenings
Gluten Free, Halal and Vegetarian options
Free tasters of different fish for customers to try
Visits to schools to educate about sustainability
Delivering food to local retirement homes and football clubs
2016 was also the year that Millers took the world of social media by storm with over 1600 facebook followers, over 1700 Twitter followers and over 1300 Instagram followers, figures which are only sure to increase as they are more and more active online. After a successful 27 years out of their existing Florigo range, it was time to look for a replacement. David and Nick looked at multiple manufacturers alongside Florigo to investigate the options within today’s market. Florigo came out on top once again as the range of choice due to the advanced Active Triple Filtration system and the finishing touches like Halo lighting and mirror doors, all of which added finesse to what is an outstanding, solid and reliable piece of technology. Florigo installed a new 5 pan High efficiency range in November 2016.
The months passed and Millers continued making improvements to their business while sailing through the awards judging process, making the top 60 in August, top 20 in September and then becoming one of the Top Ten finalists in October. To become a finalist was a massive achievement for a business that had only thought about entering less than 12 months beforehand.
January 2017 soon arrived, with the awards were held at the Plaza in London on 26th January 2017. It was a fantastic event with many deserving winners and Millers were crowned Regional Winner and came third place Nationally in the Independent Takeaway Fish and Chip award category.
A phenomenal result for a fantastic business run by a very hardworking and dedicated team.