County pie firm is going for a new look and taste

PUKKA Pies is freshening up the signs it sticks up outside the nation’s chip shops.

The Leicestershire pie business – which has an annual turnover of £45 million – has updated its branding to encourage more people to tuck into its savoury products.

Earlier this year the business committed itself to a massive marketing push to get its products on to more supermarket shelves, with a multi-million pound marketing campaign.

That included a new recipe for its all steak pie, with chunkier cuts of beef and richer gravy, along with new packaging and a new ‘Everything’s Pukka’ TV ad campaign.

The business said the new chip shop signs remain true to its “instantly recognisable” styling but with more “contemporary” colours and fonts.

Designers have changed the black to charcoal, the white to cream and neon orange to a “warm, natural” orange and added a pie silhouette to the bottom of the “A” in “PUKKA”.

The new designs will be used on illuminated signs, pavement signs, posters and door signs.

About 25 million Pukka Pies are sold each year to shops and supermarkets with a further 35 million sold each year to people who sell hot food such as chip shops and football stadiums.

Average production at the Syston factory is around 200,000 pies per day, while the company has supplied Leicester City for more than a decade.

Pukka Pies director Tim Storer said: “Ever since my father first started trading as Trevor Storer’s Homemade Pies 50 years ago, fish and chip shops and eating out venues have been – and always will be – the heartland of our business.

“But, like any competitive company we also need to be responsive and nimble, and not sit still.

“We hope the new brand proposition for our foodservice partners helps attract a wider consumer base, as we know that there is room to grow the category, and in turn increase sales and profits for our valued customers.”

The business – which makes 30,000 of its bestselling all steak pies every day – was founded by the Storer family in Leicestershire in 1963.

It now supplies fish and chip shops, stadia and supermarkets and is said to be the UK’s number one “hot pie brand” across the food service and grocer sectors.

It employs 350 people in Leicestershire.