Billingsgate Market

Any good caterer in the United Kingdom knows that the largest selection of fresh fish is offered for trading each day at Billingsgate market. Fresh fish arrives each day from overseas and from the coast ensuring only the best for the over fifty merchants that sell and trade there. The market offers the biggest selection of fish and fish products such as poultry, various cooking oils, trade sundries, potatoes, and catering supplies. This brings music to the ears of many caterers as they always want to serve up nothing but the finest quality of foods.

Much of the UK history indicates that markets such as Billingsgate were the centre of the supply chain from farm to consumer. In the 1990's this changed to reflect the rise in supermarket retailing and the development of more efficient direct distribution of food. The decline then stopped rather abruptly later because there was a rise in food consumption from the home and a significant rise in the catering industry. Caterers are generally small business owners and they rely on markets such as these to supply their wholesale markets.

For caterers that intend to serve the freshest and finest foods places such as Billingsgate Market are very welcome. Billingsgate is very important to city restaurants and the catering trade. The market also offers tour groups of up to 6 people. Tuesday is the day that is recommends seeing the Market at its busiest. Tours last approximately 3 hours and include a breakfast. The tour can also incorporate a visit to the processing unit, instructions on fish preparation and information on products and prices are also included.


Billingsgate Market is served by almost every port in the United Kingdom-from Aberdeen to Penzance. Most of the fish is transported by road directly from the coast and arrives at the market in the early hours of the morning. Imported frozen fish is usually shipped in large refrigerated containers. Imported chilled fish is often air freighted-sometimes from countries thousands of miles away-or arrives by sea via roll-on, roll off ferries. Billingsgate is a legend to many, especially those that are in the food industry.