A melodious tune in a TikTok video with a voiceover of a man singing ‘Binley mega chippy’ has sent an influx of customers to a South Asian family-run fish and chip shop, as queues for cod line up outside the red and yellow chip shop on Binley Road in Coventry.
What started in May as a takeaway appreciation video, by the TikTok user ‘craigs.kebab.house,’ has spiralled into a surge of parody videos, including the page ‘welovebinleymegachippy’ which created the singsong video that went viral.
The first-ever online mention of the takeaway was reported by Twitter user ‘Dave Rutt’ on 29 January 2009, who tweeted, “Been to Binley Mega Chippy. Have Pukka Pie and Chips. Stead and Kidney. Lush.”
The sudden popularity has left the staff overwhelmed as the owner 70-year-old Kamal Gandhi, has spoken out about how he still has ‘no idea’ how the shop he has been running for 30 years, has seen quite so many customers since blowing up online.
In an interview, he told The Guardian that if the influx in customers continues, the shop will not be able to keep up with the supply and demands of the small operational business.
Surprised by the flocks of people and queues to no end, he said “Thursday it started to get busy, and I noticed people out the front taking pictures. I was just like, ‘What are people doing?’ We assume someone local who likes the food has made the song and it’s just gone viral.”
As TikTok influencers and content creators alike share videos of the typical British staples, views are accumulating by the masses on social media, as the videos indulge in the orders of greasy battered fish, battered sausage, and gravy, chips, and mushy peas.
The particular focus is on the eatery’s cheap and cheerful £4.99 “Morbius Meal”, which consists of fish and chips, mushy peas, with a can of pop.
Sadia Nowshin shares her experience of being “pleasantly surprised” by the eatery and that paying £7.10 for the portion size was worth it.
“The fish had a crispy batter that wasn’t greasy like others…. chips varied from thick and soft to thin and crispy and were suitably slathered in salt and vinegar in the only way that British chip shops know how” she shares via the food blog Delish.
The viral TikTok video has caused a media frenzy, as the Gen-Z tech-savvy generation has taken it upon themselves, to get as creative as possible with the memes and parody videos featuring the fish and shop.
BBC Radio CWR also shared a video of a group of young men wearing orange high-vis jackets, blaring electronic music, whilst they sing the chippy song, standing outside the minibus which drove them 6 hours from Scotland just to visit the place of “absolute staple”, as one TikTok user described.
Some would say the timing of this viral video is a bit fishy, as it comes with the timely broadcast of BBC Two’s ‘Britains Top Takeaways’ which showcased five of the nation’s top-rated chip shops.
The debut episode of the show was fish and chips, which was the first out of eight in series one, in which Gloucestershire, Coventry’s neighbouring city won the competition.
As well as this, Coventry was the winner of the City of Culture award in 2021, which was followed by Bradford who won the award yesterday.
One person tweeted “Binley mega chippy has done more for Coventry than the year of culture”.
There may be no reasonable explanation for the crazed frenzy around Binley Mega Chippy, but one thing is for sure whether winning the UK City of Culture, has helped Coventry or not, TikTok’s elusive algorithm has helped the local business increase its footfall by a mile, and has temporarily driven tourism to Coventry unwittingly.
