About the Sharp Chef

It is with an extremely heavy heart that I reluctantly announce the Sharp Chef will be permanently closing on August 31st 2025.

It's been an incredible journey for us as a business, but due to increasing costs, competition and restrictions on postage of knives we find ourselves unable to continue profitably and provide a service that we are proud of.

We have always been a family run business who want to provide a personal service, however due to health and wellbeing challenges in the family we have been forced to reduce our office hours and increase our delivery times and it is becoming impossible to run the business we want, the way our customers deserve.

We are dedicated to ensuring all our customers, old and new, are satisfied before we close. We will maintain our policies and honour all orders placed until our closure.

We will be offering our remaining stock at reduced prices while stock remains, but when it's gone, it's gone, as we will be getting no new stock deliveries from now on. To reduce our overheads we will be shipping once a week and so ask for your patience with delivery which could take up to 2 weeks depending on when the order is placed. We will only be offering UK shipping from now on.

Upto 50% off remaining stock

Free wooden saya with any 240mm Sujihiki knife

Free plastic blade guard with any Petty Knife

Our Journey:

We opened in 2017 with a limited selection of knives, working from our little kitchen and grew our business slowly working with professional chefs and our growing customer base to expand our products and improve our service. In 2019 we moved to an office in the garden and improved our delivery times.

During Covid, with more people shopping online and getting into cooking at home we thrived and outgrew our space so we moved into a nice new office and expanded our ranges, brought on new suppliers and offered next day delivery.

In 2023 we started to feel the pinch as more shops opened and sale prices got squeezed while knives went up in price for us to buy. As a result our sales began to decline and we had to return to a home office. Sadly this pinch became more of a tight squeeze and we have been fighting to find the balance between competitive prices and profitability, but have not been able to find the right balance for a business of our size.

We never wanted to become a faceless postage machine, but remain a personal business, enthusiastic about the products we sell, but that model is hard to maintain with out the economies of scale of the bigger businesses. To have followed the market and remained profitable would have meant running a business we didn't enjoy, and so we have no regrets that we were not able to keep this going.

We wish every one of our customers a lifetime of sharpness, of blade, mind and body.

 

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The Sharp Chef was established in 2017 by Chris and remains a small independent family run business today. We're based in Cambridge, UK where all our stock is held and shipped from.

Here's Chris on The Sizzle Show live on Instagram with Masterchef's Greg Emmerson talking about knives. Click to see the full show.

We offer free shipping on all orders (see shipping policy), generous return policy and we are always here to offer advice.

So why buy from The Sharp Chef?

  • We really care about our customers, please get in touch if you have any questions or need advice or help choosing the right knife
  • We have free UK shipping on ALL orders
  • We use Royal Mail for a robust tracked and insured service to support our deliveries, not a rough and ready courier company
  • We have worked with Professional Chefs to select our range of products, so they are tried and tested and we are confident you will find what you need in one place
  • We offer 30 day returns if you have a damaged product, or 10 days if you simply change your mind
  • We can also access many more knives and products than we have on the website, so if there's something you think is missing, please let us know.

At the end of the day we love what we do, and we want you to love our products and our service. We work very hard to improve all the time.