Hawke's Bay company cooks up multi million pie deal

After a couple of years of "testing times" Napier-based Goodtime Pies has struck a multi-million dollar deal which will raise production and staff numbers.
The deal, to supply pies for the planned 220 Z Energy service stations all over New Zealand comes just two months after the Onekawa company forged a deal with the Pam's brand to supply what Goodtime managing director Phil Pollett described as "huge volumes" of microwave pies to the Foodstuff chain. The Z Energy company (which is replacing Shell service stations) had promised Kiwis "better pies" at its outlets, and at the end of a six-month process the Goodtime Food Company received the nod, to the delight of Mr Pollett.
Part of the process involved a trial at one of the Z chain's service stations last month. The result had been a 300 per cent increase in pie sales. "As a New Zealand business, we have been using our Kiwi ingenuity to achieve more, by investing in leading-edge technology and innovation and up-skilling our staff," Mr Pollett said. "We're on a major comeback. With Pam's and Z's business, we are planning to increase bakery staff numbers from 24 to 34 and our turnover is expected to double to more than $10 million and quite probably more if current sales to the test site are anything to go by."
The latest boosts effectively reversed a down-sizing programme the company had started in the wake of losing a major contract with the Shell chain in 2006. "We've been working in an extremely tough and competitive market, and we've had to really focus on our costs," Mr Pollett said. "In the end it has been our never-ending commitment to quality and our own national distribution channels that have seen us pull off these two major contracts."
Z Energy chief executive, Mike Bennetts, said he was thrilled to find a local supplier who was "world-class."
"In the end, the decision was relatively easy as the taste and quality of Goodtime pies were streets ahead, and we had no doubt that they had the expertise to deliver on a national scale," Mr Bennetts said.
The first Goodtime pies will be sold through the first 10 stations being rolled out across the country from next month.