A husband and wife Cumbrian catering team are celebrating with expansion plans and a raft of new business, including hooking a major new client in the form of TransPennine Express.
Carlisle’s Pie Demand are in demand, and the company launched by Laura and Brian Twigg five years ago has clearly benefited from their base at Carlisle Railway Station. Delicious smells from their traditional home made pies and sausage rolls wafting around the station may in fact, have been the catalyst for the new contract with leading train operator TransPennine when an employee found himself visiting them for his lunch.
The TransPennine executive was so impressed that word on Pie Demand was passed through to the railway firm’s catering team. Hey presto, caramelised sausage and vegan sausage rolls baked by Pie Demand are now being served on TransPennine trains in their First Class menu.
Following this chance encounter Laura explains it was a pleasant surprise when they received an enquiry from TransPennine.
“We sat in our office and we had the train station manager knock on the door, and he said we have the TransPennine people here, would you be happy to meet them and we said ‘absolutely’. We ended up doing an impromptu site tour and explained our story and showed them what the products were that we were making, and gave them to sample and then we had an email the following week saying we want your products and can you supply us. It was all very exciting.”
The contract is a convenient arrangement for Pie Demand as they simply load their shipments of food offerings for TransPennine Express straight onto the platform.
“This has been a significant contract for us. It is a feather in our cap to be associated with a high profile company,” says Laura. “We are proud to be associated with them.”
Pie Demand have two units underneath Carlisle Railway Station, and host a pop up shop on the platform four days a week.
This new expansion of their business is part of a growing success story for the Carlisle born and bred couple, who launched back in February 2019, only to face a series of obstacles. Laura was previously working as an estate agent but around the time of the launch, unfortunately, she was made redundant. Then came the shock of Covid.
“Everything happens for a reason. I am a firm believer in that,” says Laura. “Then we battled through Covid. There are challenges for any business.”
“We kept going. The main part of our business is events. We produce the pies here and we go out to events. We go to farmers markets, food festivals, agricultural shows. That is what we are known for around the area. We do about 350 events. We do the Taste Cumbria events. We do mainly food festivals.”
During Covid their events business was effectively cancelled due to lockdown so they had to adapt, offering home deliveries, providing a vital service to the community.
“We had to change the business and started doing home deliveries. So that is how we got through. We worked right through. We didn’t have any time off. We didn’t have any furlough. We worked right through and we were literally delivering pies to people’s doorsteps. People were really grateful. We delivered good quality products straight to the doorsteps.”
Since those challenges the business has gone from strength to strength and they have been increasing their staff numbers to cope with demand, doubling their team. Reflecting their growth success, Pie Demand also recently garnered an Elite Business Awards – Scale Up Award, and are now gearing up for their busy summer and festive festival periods.
“Northumberland County Show, we are sponsoring the food hall at the Cumberland Show this year,” says Laura. “We will be at Penrith, Skelton, Dalston. We do all of those. We do fairs further afield as well, they go across the whole year but the summer season kicks in and we are very busy with events. There is a lull around October and then it starts again with Christmas.”
Laura points to their success being down to: “Good quality products and good quality ingredients. Everything we make is handmade. We provide consistency but they are handmade products at the end of the day.”
Husband Brian also brings much experience in the food industry to the table, on the food creation side as well as the business side, having worked for small independents as well as bigger companies such as Pinney’s fish factory in Annan plus the household name McVitie’s.
“We have been very lucky,” adds Laura. “We have got some very loyal customers that have been with us from the start. We work hard. We pride ourselves on providing very good quality. We offer handmade products. We try to use locally sourced ingredients where we can. Customer service is very important to us as well.”
“I just want to say thank you to all our customers. Thank you for your continued support. We look forward to welcoming you all to Pie Demand – Bakehouse and Deli. We are hoping to have that open in the next couple of weeks.”
The couple’s other clients include Fenwick department store in Newcastle, serving their food hall, but right now they are mostly looking forward to opening their new Bakehouse and Deli store which will be a stand alone premises near the station, offering a wider menu range, including side dishes, as well as deli sandwiches, breakfasts and coffee.
