Pie and quiche specialist Mud Foods has moved back to Chichester and into a brand-new, 6,000 sq ft bakery to help keep up with growing demand for its handmade products.
Founder and chief pie maker Christian Barrington told British Baker that the latest expansion move for the Sussex-based manufacturer “represents a substantial investment, mainly funded from internal resources and recourse to bank facilities”.
The new purpose-built site located in St James Industrial Estate is almost four times larger than Mud Foods’ previous bakery in the nearby town of Midhurst, allowing it to quadruple production capacity whilst maintaining the quality of its range. It currently offers 14 varieties of single-serve savoury pies (from £4.99, 270g), three flavours of fruit pies, four different square quiches (which it calls ‘squiches’), two types of Scotch eggs, and three options of side dishes.
These are sold online for nationwide delivery and stocked by pubs, restaurants, delis, and farm shops. Bestselling lines include the Steak & Ale Pie, the Chicken, Ham & Leek Pie, the Red Onion Marmalade & Brie Squiche, the Black Cherry Pie, and Beer Battered Chips. It also gained an Aldi listing for its Chip Shop Chicken Curry Pie after winning the Channel 4 TV show Aldi’s Next Big Thing in 2022.
Having successfully brought out limited edition pies from time to time, such as the Pulled Pork in Sticky BBQ Sauce Pie, Mud Foods said it would now be looking at new ways to expand its offering as well as entering overseas markets. It recently recruited two additional full-time employees to bring its workforce up to 15, with further expansion anticipated.
The new bakery is kitted out with new equipment to make it significantly more sustainable and energy efficient than its predecessor, noted Barrington. Key features include solar panels on the roof, state-of-the-art refrigeration and freezing systems, a new oven, and motion-sensing LED lighting. There is also better insulation and streamlined production processes to minimise wastage and energy consumption.
Barrington started his entrepreneurial journey with a small café in Chichester in 2006. Inspired by his grandmother’s traditional recipe, he began crafting and selling pies at local farmers’ markets, where demand rose quickly for the generously filled products with signature butter-rich shortcrust pastry.
In 2009, he shut the café to focus on growing Mud Foods, investing in a small industrial unit in Chichester. Two years later, he moved again into a bigger premises in Midhurst. The business became a family affair, with Barrington’s wife and parents-in-law joining the business.
Mud Foods has since picked up six separate honours at the British Pie Awards – among these were triumphs in the Vegan Pie category in 2020 with its Squash, Spinach & Feta (Vegan) Pie and the Free From category in 2023 for its Gluten Free Chicken, Ham & Leek Pie.
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