A cornerstone chippy which has served generations of Ayrshire families closed its doors for the final time yesterday.
The Wellington Restaurant, on Ayr’s Sandgate, fried their last fish supper on Sunday after 54 years in business.
The family-run business, owned by the Iannotti family since 1968, has been a pillar eatery in the town for over five decades, serving up fried delights to not only Ayrshire families, school kids and office workers enjoying a ‘Fish Friday’, but hungry holiday-makers who queued out the door in the summer months awaiting their fish suppers.
The Wellington was founded by four brothers – Alfie, Michael, Gus and Livio – who originally hailed from an Italian town inland from Naples called Piedimonte.
But in recent days it was cousins Roberto, 60, and Antonio, 54, who ran the frying favourite with a dedicated band of 10 full time and five part time employees.
Roberto, who has been frying for 46 years since the age of 14, said it was time to pass the reins on to a new owner — who are said to be reopening as a fish and chip shop next year — as he looks to retire to make his health a priority.
He said: “In the summer it’s mega, mega busy. In August I think I did 86 hour weeks every week.
“It’s getting tougher and tougher.
“Unfortunately with me getting a bit older, I’m just not very fit nowadays, too many different health problems, and my body is telling me it’s time to stop.
“The last couple of years have been very tough for everybody with Covid. And one thing we learned about Covid was ‘here today, gone tomorrow’- life is short.
“There’s a balance between working, socialising, and having a good time; and at the moment we work too much and don’t have enough free time.
“But we’ll miss it because we’ve been here a long time and know a lot of people.
“We’ll miss the buzz. We’ve got great staff, great suppliers, great customers.
“A lot of old employees have come in. For a lot of people this will have been their first job.”
Cousin Antonio said: “We get a lot of regular customers. A lot of people have come in when they were younger, especially when Ayr Academy was just there, and now those kids have grown older and have their own kids and it’s that generation of families.
“We’ve got a very low turnover of staff; we’ve got a lot of loyal staff.
“I think of them not as staff but family. That’s how we treat them, and they treated us as family — and that’s how it should be.”
Roberto and Antonio are delighted their family-run chippy will remain a fish and chip shop with new owners expected to reopen next year.
Roberto said: “We’re passing the business on to somebody else who is going to run it as a fish and chip shop, which is what we wanted to do.
“We didn’t want it to be turned into a McDonalds or a Burger King — we wanted it to remain as a fish and chips shop.
“A lot of people who live in Ayr have never known it as anything else because it’s been a chippy for such a long time. Even before our time, it was a fish and chip shop.
“These two buildings (Wellington and next door Renaldo’s) operated as a café since 1890 or something, so there’s always been something here.”
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