The perfect pastry delivery: No half-pie measures for renowned Southern brand
Is there anything better than popping into your local café for a delicious pie? Well, it turns out there is: a delicious fresh pie delivered directly to your doorstep.
Ensuring that pie turns up in perfect condition is no easy feat, however. For Fat Bastard Pies it was a challenge worth taking on. The Invercargill brand just needed to be certain the quality of their product would withstand the rigours of national travel.
Created nine years ago by qualified chef James Owen, Fat Bastard Pies is now an institution in Invercargill. There’s been a lot of hard work building this reputation, and his unwavering commitment to high standards has undoubtedly been a recipe for success (along with the other actual recipes).
“It’s a small shop and from 10:30am until 2pm there are often lines out the door.”
Nowadays “you can’t go to Invercargill without stopping there,” according to Fat Bastard’s marketing manager (and cousin of James), Simon Owen.
“It’s a small shop and from 10:30am until 2pm there are often lines out the door,” he says. “There’s no traffic in Invercargill – so a line for pies is astonishing.”
As word got out about the mouthwatering pies, the business looked for ways to expand without compromising their iconic charm and intrinsic quality.
“We were always being asked to franchise, or to open more stores, but we wanted to stay local and true to ourselves,” says Simon.
Yet visitors to Invercargill continued to send messages asking to ‘send me a box’. And so, the Fat Bastard Pie Club was born.
It was an idea whose time has come. The concept took off, their story was picked up by Seven Sharp and Fat Bastard content became popular on Tiktok, where it reached a whole new demographic.
Orders grew to where the bakery now ships between 200 and 250 boxes weekly. Now members can opt for a subscription or a one-off delivery, with 12 flavours to choose from.
It would have been easy to meet this demand by sending the pies frozen, but the cousins knew their market. Pies are a ‘now’ food – nobody wants to hang around waiting for their Magic Steak & Mushroom or Miss Steak & Cheese to defrost before eating. So too is a fresh pie that much better to the bite.
When Fat Bastard came to Universal Packaging, they were looking for a way to stand out and ship safely – and to do so in the most efficient and cost-effective way possible.
The custom boxes weren’t just for eye-catching branding, the thick stock and sturdy construction helped to retain the integrity of their precious pie cargo. Within these boxes ice packs are now used to keep the contents cold, with the Woolpack providing perfect insulation. Couriers are instructed to treat the goods with priority, so every box is always delivered on time.
As the business grew, one of the challenges the company faced was time. Each carton that left initially required three courier labels to be manually added. We suggested printing the labels directly onto the cartons, a process that saved significant amounts of administration time for Fat Bastard.
Traditionally polystyrene would have done the job for packaging, but the environmental cost of this material didn’t sit well with the business.
“Woolpack outperforms polystyrene and other types of insulation, making it the ideal choice for businesses…”
“There’s the storage factor with it (polystyrene) and, more importantly, there’s the fact it doesn’t break down easily,” says Simon. “It just didn’t sit right with us.”
Woolpack is a naturally sourced product that can be recycled and then, at the end of the product’s life, composted. The fibres within this packaging ensure a stable temperature is maintained, while the breathability of wool means it offers a natural cooling system for the pies.
“Woolpack outperforms polystyrene and other types of insulation, making it the ideal choice for businesses like Fat Bastard,” says Universal’s BDM Dean Godfrey. “It’s a sustainable, low-impact choice that makes sense no matter which way you look at it.”
The humble Kiwi pie has come a long way over the years. Now it is going farther in distance and further in quality – the cousins behind Fat Bastard making the right choice in their baking, their branding, and their packaging.
“I’m really enjoying working with the Fat Bastard team,” says Dean. “And it’s always important to double or triple-check the quality of a pie or three. We have to do our research after all!”
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