What We Believe

We believe that “If it’s not fun it’s not worth doing” so this document and all the supporting documents are written in a fun, story sort of way, our apologies if you don’t get it, it’s just who we are….!!!

Because we care about our people, our customers and our products we have created this document and posted it on the web so that we can all share The Goodtime Pie Co.’s view of the world. We are proud to share OUR HISTORY which spans three generations of bakers.

Without our customers we wouldn’t have a business, so looking after the people who buy our products is built into our DNA.  Customer care is central to everything we do.  We don’t promise anything we can’t do or provide, but we go all out to deliver on what we have promised, on time, and to meeting or exceeding our customer’s expectations.

We deal straight. We believe our customers want to be treated with honesty, openness and integrity, and that doing this creates the conditions for long-term profitable relationships for both of us.

We also believe our customers expect real value for their money and we want them to feel they are receiving it.  The way we run our production is a key part of achieving this.

OUR MISSION is to make the “Best Pies in the World”. We want every pie that leaves our place to be the best of the best. Our plant and processes are at the leading edge of bakery innovation and we work relentlessly to stay there. We even make a lot of our own machinery to achieve this.

Along with process and machinery upgrades we are always on the lookout for better ingredients. Our policy is to plough any savings back into the product so enabling further product quality gains. See what we have done so far here

Our commitment to SUSTAINABILITY means we are constantly upgrading our plant, processes, and ingredients to improve product taste, quality, and consistency while reducing resource use and waste. Our primary focus when selecting machinery is to remove the stressful jobs from our process. Upgrades almost always provide significant cost savings from reduced energy use and increased productivity, as well as making better products.

This virtuous cycle feeds on itself, once working, but it won’t start by itself.  It has to be powered up and run by engaged, motivated staff willing to accept continuous change and innovation.

We value and look after OUR STAFF as we do our customers.  We want The Goodtime Pie Co. to be known as “a great place to work” which is why we have a Staff Representative Committee who are elected, by staff, each year to represent them in all matters concerning them and most importantly to keeping management informed of what’s going on and what they should be doing about it.

We operate a policy of ‘continuous improvement’ with all staff as well as in our processes after all they are the people who make all the processes work.

Most business people will tell you when asked “our staff are our most important asset” well we don’t just pay lip service to that notion we truly believe it and that “happy staff are productive staff” so we do whatever we can to have happy staff.  It’s not always possible because after all people are people and some people have difficulty with “happy”. However, we dauntlessly truck on and do what we can. See some of the cool stuff we do with our people.

At The Goodtime Pie Co. we take Health, Safety & Wellbeing very seriously. Our H&S committee meets monthly or where needed as often as is necessary to continuously make or workplace safer. HSW is a key agenda topic in our board meetings where senior managers and directors take it very seriously and take action where there may be a threat to the safety of our people.

FOOD SAFETY is an obvious and very necessary part of any good food business but here at The Goodtime Pie Co. we go to excess, as in a lot of things we do. We first implemented our Food Control Plan (FCP) in 2005 and have maintained and improved on it over the years culminating in a completed revamp of our North Island bakery in 2012/13 which prepared us for a Risk Management Program (RMP) which is like a FCP on steroids. An RMP gives us the ability to export to the world. Then in 2022 we wanted to lift the bar again and researched the most stringent food safety and quality program in the world, and one that had the best global recognition and that was the British Retail Consortium (BRC) standard. We prepared ourselves and went for it and gained certification on our first attempt with a B grade, then an A grade in 2023. Then in 2024 we had un-announced audits and attained an AA+ grade – the highest possible level.

EXPORT has always been a dream for us guys here at The Goodtime Pie Co.. We finally achieved it on August 2015 with our first container of product leaving for Australia on that date.

When we choose a country to export to or are approached by a country who wants to import our pies then we have to go through another process called an OMAR (Overseas Market Access Requirements) this can be onerous but we are a determined pack of guys and girls so we will always have a go.

OUR COMMUNITY is an important part of The Goodtime Pie Co.’s heritage. We are involved where we can be and support where we can with a focus on those in need and helping youth onto good life pathways. To see what we do in this space.

No matter what sort of business you might have it is really important to ensure everyone knows the rules so that we can all row in the same direction, as they say. To this end we have a set of conduct rules which you can see if you click here.

OUR CODE OF CONDUCT.  No matter what sort of business you might have it is really important to ensure everyone knows the rules so that we can all row in the same direction, as they say. To this end we have a Dignity and Respect Charter and a set of conduct rules that guide Our Behaviours.

Our History

3 Generations of Passionate Pie Makers

Gordon Pollett and his wife Maude had a bakery based in Wellington called Marie Therese during the second world war and beyond. Leo Pollett was Gordon’s second son who worked in his Dad’s bakery from the age of 14. They became one of New Zealand’s larger bakeries. During the cold winter months, they used to supply meat pies to the American soldiers who were camped on the cold Wellington foreshore during the war. The soldiers really looked forward to their early morning “cockle warming” treat.

Leo continued the tradition and eventually opened his own bakery which he called Santa Maria Cake Kitchen, in Napier in 1968 where Phil worked before and after school from the age of 13. After repeated warnings from his Mum who said “whatever you do don’t become a baker” Phil left baking behind and became a qualified engineer.

People would travel across Napier driving past many other bakeries to get Leo’s pies, they were so good. Before Phil left to become an engineer he and Leo had frequent conversations about starting a business that made only pies. Leo reckoned it would be such an easy business model.
Fast forward 5 years. In December 1977 Leo decided to make his dream come true so rung Phil who was in England working as an engineer and offered Phil a partnership in a “pies only” business. Hawkes Bay Pie (Wholesalers) Ltd was started in February 1978 with Leo and Phil as partners.

We developed a very successful business together until 1984 when Leo decided to retire after 41 years of baking. Phil bought the shares and changed the name to The Goodtime Food Company Ltd. The business quickly expanded to the Wellington region and then progressively through the whole country.
In 2015 The Goodtime Food Company bought its Christchurch based sister company, Sunnydays Foods, who had been operating under licence to The Goodtime Food Company Ltd for the prior 10 years.

In 2016 The Goodtime Food Company changed its name to The Goodtime Pie Co. Ltd and is now one of NZ’s largest commercial wholesale pastry goods manufacturers making more than 1 million pies a month and selling 28 pies/rolls every minute. Quite a leap from our humble beginnings. We produce a wide range of around 100 frozen pastry products.

Phil is well recognised in the NZ Pie Industry, and has been a judge for the annual Bakels NZ Pie Awards for some 13 years. The Goodtime Pie Co. has been awarded many NZ Pie awards over the years (without Phil being one of the judges!)

Our Product Innovations

The Mince & Cheese Pie Story

Most people don’t believe us when we tell them that The Goodtime Pie Co. was the first to market with the Mince & Cheese pie but it’s entirely true. People ask how we got the idea?
Here’s the story.
Phil walked out in to the bakery and caught one of our staff loading a handful of cheese under the lid of a mince pie. Phil asked what the heck he was doing and he responded that his granny always puts cheese on top of their mince meals at home so he thought it would be okay for him to do it to his pie. Phil told him he’d better make him one and the rest is history.
We had a great mixture of reactions, mostly negative when we went to the market but once the potential customer tried it we got the order. We got a lot of new customers out of it and credit this one product to our most prolific expansion way back when…Thanks Grandma!!!

The Multipack Pies Story – (working with our customers)

The multipack pie, usually a 6 pack these days, is found in your supermarket. The Goodtime Pie Co. was first to market (well apart from one supermarket store that is) with a pack with more than one pie in it. Here’s the story.
Phil was in New Plymouth visiting customers. He walked into a supermarket deli where a staff member was putting 5 pies into a plastic bag, sealing it and putting a label on it. He said to her “what are you doing” she looked at him blankly and said “putting pies in a bag” Phil, red faced, said “yes but why” she said “because the boss told me to”. Phil had to laugh, funny girl, it gave him time to think about rephrasing my questions. Phil asked her how many she did. She pointed out the door so he went and had a look. There were hundreds of them. Phil couldn’t leave without one further dumb question he asked ”why only 5 pies”?. She smiled and said “because I can’t fit 6 in the bag”.
Phil said The Goodtime Pie Co. could do it for her and almost got a hug. The rest is history. We put our 5 pack Classic Mince pies in to almost every supermarket in the North Island. We had the market to ourselves for quite a while before our competitors woke up to it.
At one point in time I had a call from a major supermarket group buyer who congratulated The Goodtime Pie Co. for having a single product that outsold all other fresh food products in the deli with a 78% share of all sales by volume. The Goodtime Pie Co. got an award for that.

The Heart Tick Pies Story- (working with our customers)

The Goodtime Pie Co. was first to market with a range of commercially available pies that had the New Zealand Heart Foundation Tick of Approval for healthy food. They included Mince & Cheese and Steak and Cheese and 3 others. The tick is very hard to achieve and we spent 2 years and a lot of money trying to achieve it.
Here’s the story.
We were a major supplier to schools via a New Zealand wide catering company who had called us in and told us that ALL PIES would get banned from all the schools unless we took the fat and salt out of them. They were well ahead of the government initiative which followed a couple of years later.
Over the next 2 years we worked with them making minor but incremental changes as we learnt how to achieve reductions in fat and salt and an increase in fibre while still keeping the taste. We were successful and decided we should see if we could push the boundaries of our new-found knowledge and see if we could secure the Heart Tick, which we did.
We were actually on TV One news at 6 o’clock on a Sunday night as it caused a big splash in the world of food.

The Vegan Pie Story – (working with our customers)

One of our biggest customers Z Energy, actively promotes pies through its many sites. They are great to work with and have some great tools which they use to engage their customers. One of the competitions they run saw a rather large feedback from the vegan community who demanded a true vegan pie.
Here’s the story.
Our product development guy Paul, went to work and quickly discovered that this would not be very easy. The problem was that most ingredients which are fine for vegetarians do not meet the strict standards of vegans, this was news to us. However, within a short time Paul did an awesome job and had it sorted even though we had to import some ingredients specially to achieve it.
We released the Mexican Vegan Pie to be astounded by the demand because people that would never even consider eating vegan were hoeing them down, which meant that we ran out of the imported ingredients very quickly. We had to stop supply for a period.
We also had an issue with a very minor ingredient which was not strictly vegan so we withdrew the product immediately, sorted it within 2 hours and started remaking pies that completely met the criteria. We ended up with $15,000 worth of “not quite vegan” pies which we gave away to 2 of the countries City Missions.
Today we have an extended range of 5 vegan pies and a vegan sausage roll.

What We Believe

STAFF TRAINING starts the day a new staff member begins work at The Goodtime Pie Co.. All our staff go through an induction process to prepare them for working with us.  To make sure everybody knows what we expect of them, and what they can expect from us, our expectations are clearly laid out in our on-boarding pack and other important easily accessible documents.

While some new staff have bakery experience when they come to us, others may have none at all. We value the right attitude above most other things so experience comes second when selecting potential staff.

To make sure all our staff are able to work at the level and to the standard we need to make the “Best Pies in the World” they all take part in a structured training programme covering all aspects of bakery work. Passing the internally assessed training units also brings a pay rise to recognise the staff member’s new skills and abilities. We believe that no one should be on the Minimum Wage and our starting rate is above the Living Wage with opportunity to learn & earn above that.

After six months’ employment staff are offered the opportunity to join a COMPANY SPONSORED HEALTH INSURANCE scheme at no cost to themselves, unless they want to include their family members.  We think this is good for both The Goodtime Pie Co. and our staff, because it enables prompt assessment and treatment should a staff member become ill or incapacitated. This is good for them and, by reducing a staff member’s down time, good for us because a valuable team member gets back on deck faster than might otherwise be the case.

The other smaller BENEFITS The Goodtime Pie Co. provides are;

  • Bright clean facilities in which to relax during breaks while reading the free newspapers and enjoying free tea, coffee, including lattes, cappuccinos, mochaccinos and hot chocolate any time of the day. Our staff room has indoor and outdoor areas, and kitchenette facilities, away from the production plant.
  • The pie warmer is always on the go with free pies, sausage rolls, savouries and other products from our bakery.  As well as being a bonus for our staff, this is a key quality control check – who knows better than the people who make them what our products should taste like?
  • Our Napier bakery operates a 4 day week from Monday-Thursday so our team get a long weekend every weekend.
  • On their birthday, every staff member receives a hand-written birthday greeting card with a $20 voucher from the Managing Director.
  • Every work anniversary is acknowledged with a voucher and a round of applause during monthly all staff meetings.
  • If anyone goes 6 months without sick leave they receive two Wellness Days which can be used like annual leave
  • After 10 years’ service all staff members get an extra weeks paid holiday for that year along with a long service gift.
  • We also run a Christmas savings club and have frequent Social Club outings for those who are members.
  • We recognise that from time to time there can be friction in any group of people.  To make sure we maintain a harmonious workplace we have developed a Values policy called ‘Our Behaviours’, which applies to everyone, and we encourage anyone to call out behaviours that are inconsistent with these SPORTIVE behaviours – click the link above to see more.  Developed with, and supported by the Staff Rep Committee, it is prominently displayed in staff areas.

Most of the above have been negotiated or initiated over the years by the Staff Rep Committee who have an excellent and productive relationship with management.

The Goodtime Pie Co. is proud of our Staff Rep Committee which started in early 2000. They work hard on not only work-related matters but also on offering assistance with budgeting, personal wellbeing and many of those sticky issues that can happen from time to time in any family environment. At Goodtime we go above and beyond what most companies are willing to do to help our team through any significant life challenge.

The Staff Reps purpose is “To Make The Goodtime Pie Co. a Great Place to Work”

What We Believe
Read Our Dignity and Respect Charter
Our Behaviours

Our Community

We get a great thrill of being in a position to support the less fortunate people in our community. We produce a lot of pies and not all of them are perfect, we’re continuously working on that but because standards are constantly lifting nationwide due to the likes of the Bakels Pie Awards, we reckon we will always have seconds. So, no fear to those of you who score our seconds as a gift.
Because we sell our stuff from one end of the country to the other we see all of New Zealand as our community and in some cases beyond.
We actively support;

Big Brother Big Sister (BBBS)

We fund ‘matches’ between mentors and mentees. And we provide our team with paid time off to be mentors.

Hayseed Trust

A great organisation who supports expelled and at-risk youth into trades and other positive pathways. We provide a pie warmer and product for breakfast and lunch.

Women’s Refuge
With product from when our bakers go mad and make too much stuff

The Salvation Army
With product seconds from when our bakers are having a bad day.

Auckland City Mission
On the occasions when our freezers get too full

Christchurch City Mission
With donations of product and now weekly donations of pastry to use for their own creations.

Nourished for Nil, HB
A local group supporting and feeding the homeless and those in need.

Napier Police Community Support
With product and some cash to support disadvantaged youth.

What We Believe

Our Products

Quality is not just about product.  It is about the way we treat people and about the service we offer.  We strive to achieve quality in all we do.  It really makes a difference to how close we get to making the “Best Pies in the World” which, as you know is our mission.

Both our bakeries are only semi-automated to strike the right balance between offering efficient manufacturing and competitive pricing, but also retaining some hand-crafted input to offer a pie that looks and tastes ‘home made’. No two products look exactly the same. We pride ourselves on our product quality, and our reputation in the industry.

We are strong on continuously improving our product while maintaining a fair price. We have a couple of examples of Continuous Improvement you might like to read about further down.

Below are our ranges and a brief reason for their being.

Our Classic Range

We originally started way back in 1978 with just 2 pies on offer. The first was Mince the second was Bacon & Egg. It was so easy Dad and I ran the whole operation by ourselves for the first 3 years. We reckoned it was like the famous Ford Motors business model where you could have any colour car as long as it was black.

We expanded the range to include a Chicken Pie and a Sausage Roll and by our 4th year business had grown by 1,612% with just 4 products. It couldn’t last forever.

Our Classic Range was our first and it still remains focussed on  flavours that reach “Classic” status.

We have done a pretty cool thing or two, for which we are now famous with the Classics. To see what the story is click here.

Our Gourmet Range

Our next expansion was in to a gourmet range which became immediately popular.  We did this because some of our opposition had a crazy idea that it was a great move and I guess they were right. When we hooked up with what was to become our South Island bakery 10 years later they had a similar gourmet range so we had a competition across the country to see who would sell the most per capita over a given period.  The South Island won hands down because they eat more pies in the South (almost 2 to 1) than we do in the North, we reckon they cheated because they knew this and we didn’t. We changed to their range which was called HUB.  When we asked where the name came from they couldn’t tell us and we still don’t know. However, it is still called that and continues to be a winner for us and our customers. We recently added to the HUB range a VEGAN range. Read the story behind this here.

Our No.8 Range

We had agreed that our HUB range would never include the standard flavours because that would water down the “gourmet” message. But there was a demand for a “Real Man’s” pie (sorry ladies). We decided that the only way forward was to create a new 230g range featuring the classic flavours but with different seasonings and lots more filling. We started out calling it the “Premium” range but thought that was a bit knaff for a “Real Man” so changed it to No.8 to relate to the likes of the great kiwi number 8 wire and number 8 rugby jersey… works for us mate!!!

Our SunnyDays Range

There are a lot of people out there who want to gobble and go. They don’t want to pay too much but its gotta taste okay.  Keeps the worms from biting and all that stuff. That’s where the SunnyDays range came from. It’s a cheapy but a goody. By the way the name SunnyDays was the original name of the South Island bakery so we have kept their 24 year history alive (as at 2015) with the naming of this range.

Continuous Improvement

The Flour Story

As our company has grown over the years we have attracted better buying power due to volume which is normal in the world of business.

A flour company came to see us prospecting for our business. They offered us a $60,000 saving on our flour. Our purchasing manager came to see me all excited. I said to him “why don’t we use the saving to improve the quality of our flour”. He went away and came back with several options, more expensive of course. We trialled each of them and decided on the most expensive one which was 2 grades above what we were buying as it gave us the best improvement to our pastry. The quality lifted and the rejects dropped.  It turned out to be a no brainer.

The outcome was that we spent $45,000 of the saving on improving the quality of our product but we still saved $15,000 a year.

We used the $15,000 saving to help fund free health insurance for our entire staff.

The Meat Story

There are several pie categories from the Cheapy Price Fighter to the Premium Gourmet. Here at Goodtime we try to be the best in each of the four categories that we supply. Anyway to the story.

The story.

We were using three different grades of meat the cheapy pie obviously had the cheapest meat, however because we have a burning desire to be the best in each category we were skimming the excess fat off the top of the meat cook to make the pie better. What we worked out was that what we were skimming off and sending to the tallow man for free was equivalent to reducing the meat content which we were paying for but adding no benefit or value to the pie itself.

What we did was raise the quality of the meat and reduce the quantity of meat in the recipe (that wasn’t there anyway) by the average amount of fat we were removing from each cook. This gave us a better quality product at no extra cost and no change to the meat content of the pie. Our customers love it.

What We Believe

Our Distribution

We pride ourselves on being the best of the best in all we do including delivery of our products. Providing our customers with a high service level and going the extra mile is taken very seriously by The Goodtime Pie Co.

Our delivered in-full performance averages above 98.5%. We achieve this by working very closely with our distribution network. We do our own distribution in HB so we know how it works, and where needed we help and support our distributors to improve.

Sales Management: We have a very active and energetic National Sales Manager.

Sales Reps: We have 12 sales reps who live in the area they represent. We cover from Northland to Southland.

Customer Service: We have customer service teams in both Christchurch and Napier who can ring for orders to be delivered the next day or help with anything as needed. You get to talk with a fellow kiwi when you call The Goodtime Pie Co, and even get to talk with a fellow NI or SI kiwi!

Web Ordering: For registered customers.

Order Book Management: Most customer groups only allow their sites to order from a restricted list of products that they determine. We can actively manage that.

What We Believe

Our Environment and Sustainability

Our commitment is to set a great example by “doing it” so that others may see and then follow our examples by copying our actions.

  • We will continue to strive to minimize waste and improve consumption wherever we can in our business and in our homes.
  • We will make every effort to share what we learn with all other companies and individuals in order to fully realise our commitment to a better environment.
  • We will uphold any prevailing laws and customer driven requirements and adopt them as policy where applicable and/or appropriate.
  • We expect all who enter our working lives to adopt onsite our shared beliefs.  It will include visitors, contractors and staff.

A sign of our everyday success will be staff implementing practices at home and talking about them, other companies ringing and asking for advice or meetings to discuss our sustainability success and ideas which we will always be happy to share.

What We Believe

DIGNITY and RESPECT in the WORKPLACE

We are committed to a workplace that treats everybody with dignity and respect.

This means we must all act reasonably and with consideration for each other.

We hold that everyone, whatever their position in the workplace, deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. No one should suffer bullying or harassment. As this can put at risk the health, safety and wellbeing of our staff, we have adopted a policy of zero tolerance to bullying or harassment at work.

Unacceptable behaviour

Generally, workplace bullying is any behaviour or action that is unreasonable or undesirable at the place of work, or otherwise related to employment, which intimidates, humiliates and/ or undermines a person or a group of people.

Bullying behaviour would generally meet the following criteria:

  • It is repeated.
  • It is unwelcome and unsolicited.
  • The recipient/s considers the behaviour to be offensive, intimidating, humiliating or threatening.

Most reasonable people would consider the behaviour to be offensive, intimidating, humiliating

or threatening to the individual at whom it is directed, or to others who witness it, or are affected by it.

There is no fixed list of bullying behaviours. However, the following behaviours, especially where repeated or occurring as part of a pattern of behaviour, could be considered bullying:

  • Spreading malicious rumours or untruths about a fellow employee, or about us.
  • The use of emails or social media sites to insult, ridicule or intimidate a fellow employee, or the company.
  • Setting a person up to fail.
  • Overbearing or unnecessary supervision, overloading someone with work, or not providing enough work where others are fully occupied.
  • The use of abusive or humiliating language, physical intimidation, or physical force.

Exclusion, victimisation or any form of unfair treatment.

While a single incident of unacceptable behaviour may not be considered bullying, it will not be ignored or tolerated. In all our interests, we will intervene to prevent incidents from escalating. This will help prevent further incidents occurring.

It is however important to remember that, as employers, we have a legal right to direct and control how work is done, and that our managers, supervisors, and team leaders are expected to monitor workflow, give feedback and manage performance. There are bound to be occasional differences of opinion, conflicts or problems in working relationships – these are part of working life but legitimate performance management, carried out appropriately, is not workplace bullying.

Our responsibilities

We accept we have a duty of care in relation to the health, safety, and welfare of our staff, and that we should take all reasonable steps to ensure the psychological wellbeing of our employees while at work. We therefore intend to:

Lead by example

  • Identify bullying or harassment.
  • Deal promptly and decisively with any incidents.
  • Observe accepted performance management and disciplinary processes.

Your responsibilities

  • Treat each other and us with respect, as you would wish to be treated.
  • Report any instances of bullying or harassment to management.
  • Assist us where necessary with any investigation into incidents.
  • Participate in the established processes to resolve any issues.
What We Believe

Our Behaviours

What We Believe