How this cult British pie brand achieved a remarkable turnaround

Flatmates Will and Josh are challenging the ultimate sports-ground ‘delicacy’ with their cult pastry business started during lockdown

Certain questions divide British consumers: jam or cream first? Is it a bread roll or a bap, batch, bun, cob, stotty or muffin? And is a pie a pie when it only has pastry on the top? Will Lewis has a clear answer. Like many chefs, Lewis found the pandemic frustrating. Deprived of a kitchen to work in, during the first lockdown in March 2020 he and his flatmate, Josh, came up with the idea of making pies which they could deliver by hand to friends and family. 
Lewis had become a dab hand with pastry during his time working at St John and Rochelle Canteen. Willy’s Pies, as the new venture was called, was instantly popular. He and Josh went from making 15 pies per day to 100, propelled by social media and word of mouth. 
“We thought about what would be easy to deliver to your house and what would go down well in the middle of winter, and started going from there,” Lewis explains. “Josh used to say that the pies we did at St John were just ‘soup with a lid’ or ‘casserole with a lid’, so we just went off that.”
Their pies were generous, hearty, warming things, stuffed with imaginative fillings made with fresh ingredients. As with the recent revival of the Scotch egg, Willy’s Pies gave love and attention to a much-abused format, reminding consumers that, in the right hands, the pie is a thing of beauty. Crucially, it is something entirely encased in pastry. 
Four years later, unlike so many other Covid food ideas that fell by the wayside when people could eat out again, Willy’s Pies has endured. As we move towards winter, and peak pie season, Willy’s has just launched on Ocado, where they sit alongside Pieminister, Charlie Bigham’s, Pukka Pies and other titans of the chiller cabinets. The Willy’s range includes a roast chicken, rosemary and leek; pork, fennel and oregano; beef shin, bacon and ale; and cauliflower, leek and cheddar. 
Not content with taking on supermarkets, they have also launched at Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium, challenging that dodgiest of sports-ground “delicacies”: the football pie.
“I just think football is an avenue where people are used to eating s­­–t and spending a lot of money,” Lewis says. “We’re just trying to ease people away from the standards and offer something that’s slightly unique.” 
As an imprimatur of their credentials, Ian Wright, the former Arsenal star and pundit, has invested in the business. “Wrighty’s been amazing for us,” Lewis says. “He’s not one of those investors running in to try to make himself look good. He’s just as sound as he comes across on TV. A down-to-earth guy who has been really supportive since the get-go.” 
Between Ocado and the Emirates, it is a remarkable turnaround for a cult brand that has flirted with disaster. Lewis says they previously attempted to scale up when they “weren’t ready for it”. Today, they make around 2,000 fresh pies a day. The bake team begins at 4am and works until noon, when the cook team comes and prepares the pies for the next day. There are no plans to make it unmanageably large.
“A lot of the bigger pie companies just chuck ingredients into a mixer and there’s no skill to it,” Lewis says. “It would drive me nuts if I was going to work every day and not putting the things I’ve learnt over the course of my career to use. I think you can taste the difference.”