One of Hawke’s Bay’s best known family-owned pie-shops and bakeries has been placed on the market for sale.
Wisey’s Pies in the industrial Napier suburb of Onekawa has been churning out
crusty comestibles for ten years. The business has an A-grade food safety rating and last year achieved a turnover of
$1.3 million.
The Wiseys Pies brand is well known for its support of sport in Hawke’s Bay – involved with sponsoring the Napier stock
car competition at Meeanee Speedway, and for its backing of the Taylor Hawks basketball team competing in the
professional National Basketball League.
In addition to its wide selection of pies, Wiseys also produces other baked goods such as muffins, doughnuts, pastries,
rolls and sandwiches, with a three-wand espresso coffee machine adding beverage revenues to the business.
The Wiseys Pies business is being marketed for sale by negotiation by Bayleys Hawke’s Bay at a time when New Zealanders
are showing a healthy appetite for pies. The bakery operates out of a leased purpose-built 670 square metre premises
with an abundance of off street customer and staff car parking.
Latest consumption data from food manufacturing body Food Standards Australia New Zealand show that bakers in this
country produced 66 million pies in the 2016 calendar year – with the average Kiwi consuming 15 of the baked comestibles
per person.
By comparison, Australians gobbled their way through an average of 12 meat pies person over the same period.
The Food Standards Code stipulates that a meat pie must contain a minimum of 25 percent of meat flesh. The remaining 75
percent of a meat pie must consist of pastry, gravy and vegetable protein.
Bayleys Hawke’s Bay salesperson Gary Wise said Wisey’s Pies employed seven full time bakers and service personnel, with
two additional part-time staff working the Saturday morning shift. The bakery is closed on Saturday afternoons and
Sundays.
Mr Wise said the business had two complimentary revenue streams – firstly through its retail operations in the
industrial precinct of Onekawa, and secondly through its wholesale arm which supplies product to schools, cafes, clubs
and caterers through Hawke’s Bay.
“While there is excellent penetration in the Napier wholesale market, there is the potential to expand sales to the
wider Hawke’s Bay region, similar to what Maketu Pies has achieved from small beginnings in a Bay of Plenty town to now
having a presence throughout the North Island,” he said
“From a retail perspective the business benefits from being totally vertically integrated – selling everything it makes
on site and therefore having to avoid buying in finished product.
“Wisey’s is the biggest baked goods shop in Onekawa, and is well-supported by the high volume of foot traffic consumers
working in the surrounding industrial premises.”
The bakery’s revenues have increased by 25 percent over the five-year period from 2012, with gross profit rising by 14
percent over the same period
Chattels within the sale include all commercial ovens, walk-in chiller rooms, dough mixers and ingredient preparation
cookers, cooling racks, a full suite of display cabinets. Mr Wise said all equipment used in the bakery’s production
processes had been maintained to a high standard over the past decade, as was the public-facing retail floor space.
Mr Wise said quality controllers at Wisey’s Pies were constantly accessing pies on basic production criteria, including:
shape retention while on display, the degree of ingredient cooking for all fillings, base and crust thickness,
ingredient portioning, colour, and finishing.
Mr Wise said the traditional Kiwi pie had come a long way since its inception early last century, with flavours now
embracing mince and gravy, mince and cheese, steak and gravy, steak and cheese, chicken and vegetable, gourmet meat such
as wild pork and venison, vegetarian, bacon and egg, gourmet fruit, potato top, fish, Thai curry, and Indian curry.
ENDS