How Mitch Tonks turned Rockfish into Britain’s ‘biggest seafood restaurant group’
While the current climate is seeing many restaurants being forced to close their doors or scale back, that could not be further from the truth for Mitch Tonks.
One of the country’s leading seafood champions has recently hit the milestone of opening his 10th Rockfish restaurant, with another one on the way soon, which will be the third in the space of a year.
The first site opened in Dartmouth in 2009, with more opening in Devon before branching out to Dorset.
Chef, author, restaurateur and former fishmonger Mitch no longer spends much of his time in the kitchen. Instead, he takes on a leadership role, while continuing to push sustainable fishing practices and educate the British public.
A big part of that is Rockfish’s evolving online seafood market, allowing people to buy directly from them.
“My ultimate mission is I want everyone in Britain to be buying fish using our platform,” Mitch told The Staff Canteen.
Growing Rockfish Into a National Brand
Let’s take a step back. Mitch switched careers from accountancy to becoming a fishmonger, opening a café in the mid-1990s, which snowballed into the FishWorks chain of restaurants.
Mitch opted to go it alone in 2008, opening his Dartmouth restaurant The Seahorse, where the baton has now been passed on to his son Ben, as well as the first Rockfish.
As the brand evolved, Mitch appeared on BBC television, on programmes such as Saturday Kitchen and Celebrity MasterChef. He has also written seven cookbooks.
“We’ve been growing the business quietly and every time we had a success, we looked to new projects,” Mitch explained.
“We didn't start the business off with ‘let’s intentionally have lots of them’. We got to about five and then decided that intentionally we could have lots.
“The three sites that we did this year, one was opportune, which was Lyme Regis, my friend Mark Hix wanted to sell it, so we took the opportunity.
“The other two we really should have done around COVID, so we've been hanging on because obviously the environment has been very tricky. We wanted to make sure that we're in a solid place to be able to do it.
“We feel like the company is in a very solid place and that now was the right time to be able to go ahead and do it.
“We're always looking for new sites, but we'll probably take a pause after Sidmouth (due to open in November).”
Asked how he maintains quality across multiple sites, Mitch said: “The first thing is we have long-standing management and long-standing operations teams.
“Most of the guys have been with the business 10 years plus, real senior people. We support them, but really the quality is upheld because the business has such a strong culture at Rockfish.
“We have deliberately taken years and years to build that culture so that standards get policed by just about everybody in the business. There is a certain way of doing things at Rockfish and that's the strength to the business, to give us a real competitive advantage.”
The Online Seafood Market Vision
In a bid to try and grow the online business, Mitch has called on the services of Robert Grieg-Gran, one of the founders of Mindful Chef.
“The one area of our business that really is excelling as well as our online seafood market,” said Mitch .
“We are serving over 12,000 homes. We are looking at growing the premises.
“We're building on our brand equity. We feel that Rockfish is a well-known seafood brand. We're probably the biggest seafood restaurant group in Britain right now and we feel that our customers want to buy our fish.
“They want to consume the same fish at home as they do in the restaurants and that’s what we do.”
He added: “We did it in COVID. Boxes were going well in COVID and then people were selling fish online. I said, okay, this is the way people should be buying fish.
“I want to do it properly. I want do it with boxes that get recycled. I want do it so there's no smell. I want people to know who caught their fish, where they caught their fish and every piece of fish is labelled with the boat that caught it. It’s all filleted by hand and it all arrives the next day.
“It's taken five years of really, really hard work. But we’ve really got traction and momentum now. It's a really great thing.
“Our platform is a live market between those fishermen and the customer, which is a great piece of technology.”
Sustainability and the State of British Fisheries
Mitch has done plenty of great work over the past three decades when it comes to promoting and educating on sustainable fishing practices.
But how does he feel about the current seafood situation in the UK?
“One thing to understand is that the south coast, which is the fishery where we buy our fish, is incredibly small,” Mitch explained.
“It's only £60million worth of fish a year that’s landed in Brixham, compared to €1billion in Vigo, in Spain and $28billion in Japan. It really is a small industry.
“The one thing that our British fisheries have is that we have extensive fisheries management vessels and processes in place, so the fisheries are incredibly tightly managed. I think that's what gives our British fisheries an advantage and people should be confident in the way that we're managing our stocks in our waters.”
Asked what he tells young chefs about handling seafood, Mitch added: “I’ve done a fair bit of work at South Devon College, just trying to introduce people to seafood.
“Chefs are fairly nervous, but first and foremost what I want to get people to do is to taste fish, to understand. It takes a long time to understand it, but when you start to go down the route of understanding the various qualities of seafood, each fish has its own different quality that can really shine if you handle it right.
“But also I think the most important thing is for chefs to understand the supply chain properly. Get yourself down to a market, get yourself to the auction, understand how it works.
“Find yourself a supplier that you trust, that is buying on that market every day and to work with that supplier with what's seasonally available, rather than writing your menus without any due regard to what's in season.
“There’s no point putting turbot on the menu at Christmas because the price of it is outrageous and there’s little of it. But in the summer months when there's crab and lobster around and in May or June when there’s plaice around and you’ve got lemon soles in the winter, it’s being in tune with what’s being caught and the rhythm of the sea, which is really important.”
A Culinary Legacy: Working With Son Ben
Mitch and his son Ben are currently in the middle of a residency at Brown’s Hotel in London.
“We've taken five species of the most sustainable fishing methods, lines, pot caught scallops and diver court scallops, pot caught cuttlefish and langoustines and just put them on the menu in a very simple style,” said Mitch.
“It was lovely to be able to get Ben involved with that and for him to do his first away gig with me.
“I'm really enjoying his culinary journey. He's becoming a really seasoned restaurateur.”
What’s Next for Rockfish and Mitch Tonks?
Given how much he has already done in the industry, what does success look like going forwards for Mitch?
“Success for Rockfish? I'd like it to be a trusted brand,” Mitch said.
“We’re 15 years in now and it came from an experience, a story, with a genuine desire to help people to enjoy sustainable British seafood. It wasn’t invented by marketeers.
“It's a trusted source of seafood and a trusted seafood brand in the UK, the trusted brand is what I want it to be, where everyone goes.”
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