A north Suffolk pie maker says it saw sales soar during the pandemic - but has noticed a marked dip recently as the cost-of-living crisis bites.
Halesworth-based Truly Traceable Venison & Game Pies was launched by Steve and Lynn Tricker and went from strength to strength - but as with many businesses, high inflation is affecting both its direct sales and its wholesale business.
The company - which will be exhibiting at the Aldeburgh Food and Drink Festival at Snape Maltings on September 24 and 25 - is a field-to-fork enterprise spanning deer management, butchery and pie and sausage roll making.
Steve started as a traditional molecatcher but gained formal qualifications in deerstalking and management after seeing a gap in the market for these skills.
Lynn was working as a cook at their local pub in Halesworth and made sausage rolls for the local delicatessen. They decided to join forces and put their spare venison meat to good use.
"Initially we developed a recipe and made some venison sausage rolls to sell alongside the pork ones and they flew out the door, people loved them. This then led us into developing a venison pie recipe," explained Lynn.
"We decided to sell those as a frozen to cook at home style pie with a delicious red wine gravy with a hint of dark chocolate. We also decided to keep our venison products species specific and not bundle together meat from different deer into a batch when we cook it or make the fillings for the sausage rolls."
They never set out to launch a business, so there was no business plan, she added.
"We always say: 'The business found us.’ From the onset though we always wanted to keep the meat in the products fully traceable, complemented with locally sourced Suffolk ingredients wherever possible and handmade in small batches without artificial additives and preservatives.
"As we both had jobs at the time, it was only ever intended to be a few venison products for the local deli, we had no idea at the time it would become our full time business."
In 2014, the business was given the official seal of approval to sell its products. Then in 2015, the pair entered their venison pie in the British Pie Awards and scooped the Speciality Meat Category title. Demand soared and Lynn had to give up her job at the pub to keep up with demand.
"Our ongoing problem will always be keeping up with demand, which in fairness is not a bad problem to have," said Steve.
"We signed up for our first farmers’ market at Snape Maltings at which we totally sold out and gathered immense interest and the beginnings of a fabulous array of returning customers for our field to fork products.
"In the September 2015 we traded for the first time at Aldeburgh Food & Drink Festival which was a massive springboard for our business with the national interest we gained for what we are doing."
Since then, the business has won a string of awards, but the couple say they have no plans to expand production beyond their home.
"We have stunning countryside views from our kitchen window so the thought of working from an industrial unit is not appealing at all, even if it was an option," said Lynn.
"As we can’t increase production without losing our story, we are happy to stay at the level we are. We have both stepped away from our other jobs to run the business full time plus we have an employee to help in the kitchen two days a week."
They run courses and supply their pies to The Wild Meat Company in Blaxhall, and run an online shop.
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