Award-winning piemaker forced to close tea room due to cost of living crisis

Nice Pie expanded rapidly after celebrity chef, Jamie Oliver, visited it at Old Dalby for one of his top-rated television shows in 2015.

Owners Phil and Kath Walmsley moved production from the kitchen at Gorse Farm to a new bakery with a farm shop and tea room being quickly added to the site, which became a tourist attraction for the borough.

Nice Pie moved to a new rural location at Radcliffe-on-Trent, just over the border in Nottinghamshire, 18 months ago.

And although the business survived the impact of the Covid pandemic, the ongoing cost of living crisis has led to the couple announcing this week that they have been forced to close their tea shop there.

Phil told the Melton Times: “We got through Covid pretty much unscathed but this cost of living crisis has annihilated us.

"In the present economic climate we can’t make it pay anymore.

“The cost of raw products, the decrease in footfall, the decrease in per head spends, it just doesn’t stack up.

“This summer we were 75 per cent down on what we usually make as a business.”

Nice Pie first hit the headlines because of the speciality pies Kath was making, with unusual fillings such as meat from squirrels, elk and crocodiles.

After their appearance on the Jamie Oliver TV show, their website attracted 280,000 hits and led to a massive upsurge in sales.

Chef Simon Rimmer, one of the stars of the popular Sunday Brunch cooking show, also visited the Walmsleys to feature their pies on a programme.

Traditional pies have been the backbone of the company and they have won dozens of awards, including multiple honours at the Melton-based British Pie Awards.

Nice Pie did open a shop in King Street in Melton but that venture didn’t take off and operations were consolidated at Old Dalby until their move to Nottinghamshire in 2021.

They still have the pie shop at Radcliffe selling pies but nowhere to dine on the site anymore.

On the impact of the UK’s economic downturn, Phil commented: “It’s not just us, they are going to be many, many more businesses going the same way, I’m afraid.

“Everyone’s costs are going up by a lot, for example, a big bottle of gas for our fryers which we used to pay £47 for now costs £137.

“You can’t pass that on to your customers because they haven’t got the money to spend anyway.”

He added: “It is what it is, it’s nothing we’ve done as a business, people just haven’t got money to spend.

“It’s been 10 years of our lives so it is very sad.

“We knew what was coming.

"It’s a shame for our customers because we’ve had customers that bought from us when we started and they have still been coming to us 10 years later.

"At least we still have our shop for people to buy our pies from.”