County Tyrone farmer to open NI’s first dedicated pie farm shop and eatery

News Letter

A County Tyrone farmer has plans to open Northern Ireland’s first dedicated pie farm shop and eatery, after receiving funding from Go Succeed, Northern Ireland’s free business support service.  Joel Kerr, also known as ‘The Curious Farmer’ produces pies, scotch eggs, and sausage rolls from his regenerative family farm near Dungannon, all using high-welfare, grass-fed beef and free-range chickens sourced from trusted local producers.  What began as a traditional family farm has grown into a thriving pie venture, now with a dedicated team, retail customers, and a ‘pies by post’ service reaching food lovers across the UK and Ireland.  Joel currently opens his own farm shop occasionally but now has plans to extend opening and transform a former hay shed into a place where customers can sit and enjoy hot pies on the farm.  It follows a cash injection from the Go Succeed grant which has enabled the business to invest in modern equipment to speed up the production of pies.  It is the culmination of a more than 10-year programme of transformation at the farm.

Transcript

00:01So instead of going home and throwing the towel in, we thought what can we do

00:05better and we went back the next week and we tried new things until we found

00:09something that worked.

00:14My name is Joel Kerr and the business is The Curious Farmer.

00:17I've always been a creative person, I've just wanted to take the farm in the

00:20direction that I wanted to go in and that turned into a business. It started

00:25out I suppose as a bit of a hobby that's really got out of control. We started

00:28off basically rearing our own native breed beef and providing beef boxes and

00:33from there we started making pies and really pies have taken over since that.

00:39As a small business owner you're basically doing everything. So you make the products

00:46and that's what you think the business is about but actually that's a small part of

00:50what it's about. It's all down to the individual. With Go Succeed, with the

00:54workshops, with the mentoring. It was kind of looking at all the areas that I maybe

01:00didn't have the expertise in and trying to upskill me to suit. It's just lots of

01:05little things I didn't have time to do or to go and find out how I was going to

01:08learn how to do it. They were there.

01:10I had lots of different bits of equipment that was going to, you know, increase my

01:17productivity and efficiency and there was one piece of equipment in particular. So

01:21whenever I saw that there was finance available that was a big boost for me,

01:24which is where the Go Succeed grant came in for me and helping me buy an improved

01:30pie press. It's just double the capacity of what we can make in a day.

01:35Being a small business owner, it can be quite isolating but there's so much help and

01:40support available through Go Succeed in one place. So you're not going to have to go

01:45and, you know, find expertise in one area from one person and then from another area in a

01:51different person. It's all there. It really benefited me.

01:54I would recommend Go Succeed to any entrepreneur because it is a network of

02:01expertise in one area and there is just a wealth of information and support in one place.

02:08I Cheers.

02:09I need to go with Leo Succeed in one place.

02:26Yes.

02:28Really wasn't it.

02:29Yes.

02:30Yes.

02:31Yes.

Category

Transcript

Comments

Recommended