Pie's the limit for champion butcher as business booms

Published on Saturday 20 January 2007 11:53

IT WAS once a small family butchers whose customers loved its homemade Scotch pies, baked to a secret recipe handed down from father to son.

But since winning the 2005 World Scotch Pie Championships, Paul Boyle, owner of Boghall Butchers, has seen business boom and pie sales have gone through the roof.

The master butcher has doubled his workforce and is now forking out 25,000 for more floor space to cope with the surge in customers.

Mr Boyle, 50, followed his parents into the trade in 1976 at their shop in Margaret Avenue, in the Boghall area of Bathgate, where he continued selling the family-recipe pies.

In the past two years, his business has won five gold awards for pies and ready-cooked meals, as well as the coveted Scotch pie world title.

Sales of Scotch pies have shot up by 60 per cent to 60 dozen a day, while sales of pies of all types are up from 220 dozen to 400 dozen a week.

Mr Boyle's daughter Mariesha, 27, works full-time in the business and his wife Christine, 53, gave up her job as a shop manager to help out.

He said that the demand for pies was "overwhelming" and they now had around 2000 customers each week, compared to 1300 before the win.

"We haven't the space for the volume of customers we now have," he said. "We are having to extend to cope with the trade."

An application to extend the shop by one-third has been approved by West Lothian Council and Mr Boyle hopes work will get under way next month.

He plans to extend into the small yard at the back of the shop to accommodate the cold store, thus allowing him more all-important sales space.

"We are extending it to the maximum," he said, "We have been overwhelmed in the past two years with more and more people coming through word-of-mouth advertising."

The recipe for the Scotch pies was handed down from Mr Boyle's father William, who - at the age of 79 - still comes in to check staff are following his instructions to the letter.

"He's retired now but he still comes in to make sure everything's just right. We call him the quality-control inspector," said Mr Boyle.

The butcher would not reveal the recipe of his Scotch pies, limiting himself to saying that the secret is in the seasoning, which contains, among other things, salt and black pepper. "The secret is that we blend our own seasoning and that guarantees we get the consistency right," he explained.

Boghall Butchers also won a gold award for their roast duck with orange and cranberry pie in the savoury pastry section of the 2007 Scotch Pie World Championships.

Their poached haddock and white wine sauce pie won gold in the 2006 awards, and the butchers won two more golds in the Scottish Championships of the Meat to Go Awards 2006 for the pot roast lamb shank with seasonal veg ready-meal and the spale bone of beef in Bordelais sauce ready-meal.

The same ceremony also resulted in two silver awards for their shoulder of lamb in Madeira sauce and medallion of pork chasseur.

Other pies on offer include steak and bean, chicken curry and haggis and potato.