Pie king faces fight for life – and business
Crowdfund bid to aid family’s future
THE owner of Stockport ‘s beloved Lord of the Pies is battling to save his business all while battling to save his own life.
Oliver Doyle, 41, has recently launched a Crowdfunder campaign hoping to future-proof the independent business for his wife and children.
The award-winning pie maker has been diagnosed with a rare genetic illness that has caused tumours to develop, and although he dismisses any talk of a reduced life expectancy, says that he is now facing lifelong care.
The illness has left him unable to do many of the physical parts of the job, leaving his wife Lindsay Meckie - or Lins, as he calls her - to juggle the running of the business and caring for their two young daughters.
Oliver was diagnosed with metastatic pheochromocytoma paraganglioma, and now has five tumours, including a painful one in his sacrum.
Speaking to the Express, he said: “When I was given that bad news in hospital my first instinct was to shut the business down.
“I just thought there’s no way Lins can look after it, and two babies, and me.
“But then it’s all a bit doom and gloom when you’re in hospital, and I soon went into fight mode and thought, ‘No come on, we need the business’.
“My entire household runs off that business and without it we haven’t got a single salary - we’ve got to make things better and stronger and protect my family’s future.”
He says the reality of their current situation is ‘brutal’, with the pandemic decimating their turnover.
“We’ve lost so much with Covid,” he continued.
“We had to shut our shop in Stockport because it was so small, we couldn’t do social distancing at all.
“It would’ve been onein, one-out, we’d have racked up so much debt, so we had to shut that one.
“We’ve lost all our outside catering to offices, all the weddings we do, and that’s a huge part of the business.
“We lost about 75 per cent of our turnover. It’s crazy.
“The business is in dire straits anyway, then you throw this diagnosis in the mix and it’s too much to take.”
His hope is that the Crowdfunder will allow them to grow Lord of the Pies, expanding the wholesale side of the business so that their awardwinning pies can be served in pubs.
They also hope to open new delivery sites.
Speaking of the Crowdfunder, which at the time of writing has already reached £6,000, he said: “It’s amazing, it’s emotional - you put something like that out there and you don’t know what’s going to come of it, but people have been really quick to help us out.
“We’ve got an opportunity here to save the business.
“The stress that me and Lins are under without some form of income is brutal and very stressful, even without factoring in the illness.”
On his rare illness, he said: “I had some problems in my back, it felt like I’d broken my coccyx bone and I had numbness in my lower back.
“I went to A&E, waited there for 10 hours, got an MRI scan and then had two nurses sit down and say ‘We need to talk to you and you need to get your wife in’.
“They told me I had a tumour in my sacrum and a tumour in my spine, they found two on that scan, and they said ‘it must be cancer’.
“It turns out that wasn’t the case, but because I’ve got about five tumours where it’s metastaticised so that puts it in a much worse scenario.
“It will be life-long care now because it probably won’t go away and it’s incurable - we just need to hold it at bay.
“The doctors were quick to bandy about things like a five year life expectancy, but I just don’t believe that.
“I just don’t like talking about life expectancy.”
Part of the money raised through the Lord of the Pies Crowdfunder will be donated to The Christie, whose care Oliver is now under.
“I was blown away with The Christie once I was introduced to them,” he said. “It’s unbelievable, it’s another world and so different to what happens in a normal hospital they’re just the best.
“The aftercare that I’ll receive for the rest of my life will come from the Macclesfield Christie, which they’re currently raising money for.”
The campaign itself reads: “My plan is to leave this legacy behind me very strong.
“I want every person in this country to have the option to buy one of my pies from a major supermarket. I want Lord of the Pies to be a name everyone has heard of.
“I want my wife and staff to be able to have a job for life and my daughters to be able to decide to join should they wish.”
You can donate to the Lord of the Pies Crowdfunder at crowdfunder. co.uk/save-the-lord.
Rewards include a piemaking lesson, investment opportunities, and the chance to have a pie named after you.