A Kendal man who started his career as a psychiatric nurse has shared his story of becoming an award-winning piemaker.
Steve Manders, 59, worked in the NHS for 25 years before dabbling in wedding catering and cafes – which eventually led to him setting up The Wagtail Kitchen just outside the town in 2019.
He decided to change his career path after he was able to realise his long-term love for food and cooking while living in the North Pennines.
Steve said: “It has been a long and winding road to The Wagtail Kitchen, but it’s the best business I’ve had and we’ve been really successful so far.
“I’ve always loved cooking and I’m into food and foodie things. I ended up keeping pigs when I lived in the North Pennines around 15 years ago and through that I got into butchery, meat, charcuterie and hog roasts which led me to wedding catering.
“I got into pies because I used to do them for evening food for the weddings and I’d also do pork pie cakes and things like that.
“When I decided to stop doing weddings, my wife and I moved here and slowly started building the kitchen from scratch.”
Now selling comfort food style pies, pastries and quiches, he has gone on to win four awards for his products, including the coveted three and two stars in the Great Taste Awards in the past four years.
He added that stories of his grandad who owned a smallholding on the East Yorkshire coast also served as motivation to continue his family’s relationship with food.
Steve said: “I grew up hearing stories of him keeping pigs and growing vegetables when he retired in the 1950s and I always had this nostalgia for these stories and a this fantasy of trying it myself. The Kitchen is very much so inspired by his values.
“There’s a lot of great pie makers out there and I wanted to make sure that we were a little bit different. I believe that basically anything can go in a pie as long as its consistency is right.
“Pastry is key to a perfect pie, we use lard and butter to create a nice flaky texture for ours and you want a good filling that’s not too dry or too runny. It’s got to be comforting, filling and full of good quality produce.”
The kitchen now has a range of 20 different fillings for customers to choose from, ranging from traditional flavours like steak and ale to more unique ones like chili con carne and barbecue pork.
Steve added: “We’re keen to make sure our pies sit well on a main meal plate as we do sell them to six pubs, so they have to be substantial and filling.
“The bulk of our ingredients are also locally sourced and we use local wholesalers for any thing we can’t source locally.
“We do sell frozen pies for people to cook themselves and we have a lot of loyal customers who regularly come back, so we have little wastage because of that freezing.
“But we don’t post pies out to people anymore as I know there are local traders elsewhere who are trying to do the same thing as us and I’m keen on supporting local. I don’t think it’s fair for me to start posting pies, and we do have enough business here.”
The kitchen sells around 500 pies a week and in its first year it sold a total of 20,000 pies – which has since grown to 60,000 a year – a demand that Steve said they are managing to meet.
He added: “The demand grows every year and we’re focused on making sure we increase our capacity to meet that demand from the local market. We’d also like to do our fruit pies again, but we have to make sure everything is in place for us to be able to do that.”
The Wagtail Kitchen forms part of the Lakeland Food Park, which is made up other independent food producers including the likes of Lovingly Artisan, Ginger Bakers, Rinaldo’s Speciality Coffee and Tea and 2 Sisters Cafe.
Steve said: “We all got 16 Great Taste Awards stars between us this year, we’re really building something great within this park.
“I could not have done all this without these other businesses around me giving me help and support. We’ve really come together and everyone is creating great products and supporting each other while doing it.”
