from Two trial Pies to thousands

Mark Button and his wife Nikki come down from Taranaki and do the Otago Central Rail Trail and fall in love with the remote and stunning Maniatoto. They decide they want to look for an accommodation to buy on the trail and manage to take over the ownership of Tussock Lodge Waipiata.

Mark and Nikki decide to move south permanently and purchase the Waipiata Country Hotel in 2015. As they already had Tussock Lodge serving riders on the Otago Central Rail Trail, which passes right through Waipiata, they purchased the pub enabling them to offer food as well as accommodation.

Mark and his team create a mouth-watering menu of hearty meals for all the hungry locals and Cycle Trail users. The word spreads about their food and the numbers of visitors coming to stop, dine and stay at the hotel grows year on year.

What started with a couple of leftover lamb shanks, which they thought would go well in pastry (“because everything’s good in pastry”), they made their first pies. They didn't advertise them, they didn’t have to. The locals had them at the pub and the Rail Trail punters started to spread the word. The rest, as they say, is history...

Today the Waipiata Pie Co makes about 2500+ pies a week and demand keeps on growing. They supply all over New Zealand and all the pies are hand-made right there in Waipiata with the best of local ingredients. They're shipping pieces of local Central Otago goodness all over the place and Mark and his team are chuffed to bits about that.