The story
Cod being processed before transported to the nearby Fish & Chips Stall. As fresh as can be.
Bought by Fiskkaup Ltd. in 2016, the Fish & Chips Stall is operated at the Vesturbugt (the westernmost part) of Reykjavik‘s main harbour, just off the shipyard.
Freshly caught fish, processed early morning and sold at the the Fish & Chips Stall at the westernmost part of Reykjavik‘s main harbour a few hous later.
A family business for four generations, Fiskkaup Ltd. operates two vessels, Kristrún RE 177 and Jón Ásbjörnsson RE 777, while also running a modern and efficient processing plant at Fiskislóð.
Fiskkaup Ltd. is well equipped to handle every aspect of operations needed for the Fish & Chips Stall. The fish is caught by its vessels, processed at its plant and fried by its staff before handed over to the customer. Incidentally, the processing plant is only a few hundred yards away from the stall.
More often than not, the catch is landed late afternoon. Chilled overnight, it is then processed early morning before fried and sold at the stall a few hours later. It hardly gets any fresher?
Customers‘ acclaim and the ambassador‘s as well!
The previous owners had the portable stall custom-made in the UK and operated it during the summer of 2015. Between them, Benedikt Sveinsson, Höskuldur Ásgeirsson and Pétur Björnsson, had been working on sales and marketing of Icelandic seafood.
Sveinsson and Ásgeirsson were the linchpins at Icelandic Seafood Ltd. in Hull, while Björnsson ran his own seafood sales company, Ísberg. The three of them shared the dream of being able to buy top quality Fish‘n‘Chips in Reykjavík. Sensing there was limited interest in their idea, they took matters into their own hands.
Icelanders immediately embraced the stall and the quality products on offfer, not to mention the ever growing numbers of tourists, including a healthy proportion of travellers from the United Kingdom.
Stuart Gill, Her Majesty‘s ambassador to Iceland at the time, heaped praise on the quality of the products delivered at the stall and claimed he would definitely return. Enough said!
Fish trading on home turf
The Vesturbugt (the westernmost part) of Reykjavik‘s main harbour is literally the current owners‘ home turf. As it happens, Fiskkaup‘s current CEO, Ásbjörn Jónsson, was raised in a house at Nýlendugata. The house in question, less than 150 yards from the Fish & Chip stall, was built by his grandfather and namesake more than a century ago.
The Vesturbugt vicinity became Jónsson‘s first childhood playground. More importantly, it later provided the background to his first business-related experience as he lent his granddad a helping hand when trading lumpfish in the springtime. Incidentally, back in the day Fiskkaup Ltd. was founded on the processing and export of lumpfish roe which is still an integral part of the company‘s line of products.
The Fiskkaup family roots in the Vesturbugt-area stretch back for more than six decades of processing the catch and selling fresh or salted products on domestic and foreign markets alike. Only recently, however, have the family have taken its seafood operations ‘all the way‘ by delivering the end product to the customer through the Fish & Chips Stall.