Twyford's Rural Pie shop expands as restaurant closes

Cost of living price hikes have forced Twyford’s favourite pie shop, Rural Pie Co, to change the way it does business from January 2024.

The three-year-old pie shop is making a series of cutbacks and changes in response to rising utility bills, business rates and raw material costs.

From January 2024 the high street favourite will no longer offer a restaurant service and will instead focus on making and serving more of its award-winning pies.

Day time lunches and Friday evening dinners will be taken off the menu and instead the eatery will expand its hot snacks, breakfast and lunch options.

Business owner, and one half of the hard working husband and wife team, Phil Smith, said that crippling costs started to make a squeeze on profits about four months ago. That's when he and business partner and wife Amy had to make tough decisions to protect their brand and future.

“We’re making the changes so that we can continue to be here, really,” he said.

“We love what we do but we need to sustain and we need to survive.”

“From a café point of view the weekends are very busy, and they make money, but all that’s doing is trying to catch up for days in the week when it isn’t making money.”

Phil said that during the weekdays the restaurant didn’t make enough money to make it viable.

“I can tell you on some Tuesdays we only took £159. It doesn’t even help.”

Phil also mentioned that small businesses like his are paying big utility bills which have been on the increase and the war in Ukraine has seen prices of raw materials skyrocket.

“Our electricity bill on its own is now £1200 a month and in the last six months our flour bill has trebled.

"The margins are what’s suffering because you can only pass costs on so much before people say ‘It’s too expensive’ and once they say it’s too expensive – you’ve lost them and getting them back is even harder.”

Changing the business model has brought its challenges but Phil and Amy are looking forward to offer new services to their customers and to attaining a better work-life balance for themselves.

“Work-life balance is something that we’ve not had for a while. It's hard when it’s your own business.

“Amy is usually in the kitchen during the days. We make all our own pies, pasties and sausage rolls and that mainly starts when the café kitchen closes so we’re working 8am ‘til 10pm every day.

“So there’s no ‘life’ in so ‘work-life balance’ at the moment and we need to try and change that as well because we’re just getting worn out.”

Other positive changes ahead include all current staff being retained plus benefits for customers.

“There’s going to be breakfast sandwiches (including a vegan breakfast sandwich) and sandwiches (including gluten free sandwiches) plus a greater variety of pasties and pies. We are also putting in an oven so you can have hot takeaways and we’re also going to include takeaway family pies in the shop.

“We’re also looking at offering local cheeses and charcuterie and working with local brands like Mr Hobbs in Henley and Chiltern Valley wines plus a local tomato juice producer and we’ve just got St Crispin’s Farm in, a Berkshire-based apple juice maker.”

Phil is also excited about a new indoor seating area for customers wanting hot and cold drinks, breakfast rolls and lunchtime sandwiches, toasties, paninis, pies, sausage rolls and sweet bites.

“There’s a new seating area coming so when you enter the shop you are going to be sitting in the conservatory and it will be nice and light and airy.”

Rural Pie Co will re-open on January 23 and its opening hours will be Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8.30am-4pm.