Fish fries will be more expensive this year, food supplier says

With the deep fryers warming up for the start of Lenten fish fries on Wednesday, you've likely noticed the price you're paying has gone up over the last few years.   

Nappie's Food Service in North Fayette has aisles and aisles of fish ready to supply Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and Maryland with cod, haddock, pollock and all types of seafood for fish frys. 

"We've been buying fish for the past few months," said Nappie's partner Nick Napoleone. "We have truckloads upon truckloads of fish."

Napoleone is the third generation owner of Nappie's, the Pittsburgh area's largest independent family-owned food distributor. Prices have certainly changed over the years, mostly going up, especially in the last three years.  

Why is the price of fish going up? 

"Cod is definitely the big thing in our region," said Nappie's buyer Danny Johnston. "The big thing going on with it right now is the price of it, it's just kind of skyrocketed the last couple of years because of the Russian war going on, and that's where a lot of the frozen sea fish, which is kind of where the higher-end stuff is fished out of. So, with that kind of limiting what's available, there's places like Greenland and Canadian waters, they're getting a lot more of the cod now, and there's just a lot less to go around."   

Unlike other types of food supplies, fish prices can fluctuate heavily, depending on catch quantities, weather, and yes, even foreign wars.

"Fish is definitely more expensive this year. It just depends," Napoleone said. "It's a commodity item so when you think about fish, we buy fish from all over the world. Whether it's Greenland, Iceland, the Arctic, the Pacific, the Atlantic, it just depends."

So if you notice your local church or club charging more and more for fish every year, they're likely not hiking prices by choice, it's because they're paying more. But people are still buying and loving their local fish fries.