Garlo’s Pies has spent the past decade in the bakery fast lane. Just 12 years ago, the company comprised a single store on Anzac Parade in Sydney's Maroubra Junction.
Since that time it has opened a further 10 retail outlets, and has built its wholesale customer base to over 400.
Just three years ago, its range of pies, sausage rolls and pasties were mainly sold through its own outlets as well as hotels, cafés, schools, mobile lunch trucks, sports grounds and catering companies.
Then Coles approached the company about stocking its range, and these days, Garlo’s Pies can be found in Coles and IGA stores across NSW, and the company has just started supplying Woolworths in Sydney.
Given the potential to supply supermarkets nationwide and expand offshore, the company, which is led by former rugby league player Sean Garlick, this month moved into brand new premises.
Though it isn’t moving far from a geographical perspective, the new purpose-built facility in St Peters, Sydney, is leaps and bounds ahead of the old one in size, capacity and technical capability, according to Garlick.
For starters, the coolrooms and freezers can hold up to 100,000 pies, sausage rolls and pasties and its cooking capacity has tripled.
“We’ve gone from one oven to three ovens straight away and we’ll put a fourth in down the track,” Garlick says.
He started the business back in 2001 with his brother Nathan, a trained pastry cook, and his father Terry, a former wharfie.
Triple the output
The Garlick family has designed, managed and funded the new facility, which is three times the size of the previous one, and will triple production without the need to increase staff numbers or to change its recipes.
The facility features the latest equipment, including a state of the art coolroom and freezer system, which is computer operated and provides warnings about temperature or gas by email and text message.
“We wanted to get the latest in refrigeration
monitoring for food safety purposes,” Garlick says.
This is a
crucial step if the company wants to gain Australian Quarantine
Inspection Service (AQIS) accreditation so it can export its
products.
There is also a brand new 30-tonne flour silo that pumps the flour directly into the pastry mixing equipment, saving weekly deliveries, pallets, packaging and fuel.
Thin and flaky
The company will continue to roll its pastry from scratch and by hand, Garlick says, because its pastry is a significant point of difference in the market.
“Our pie pastry is thin on the bottom and flaky on top, like you buy from a local bakery. We’ve tried to maintain that. Even though it’s more fragile, it’s a better eating pie,” he says.
The meat used in its product range is also 100 per cent Australian beef, 90 per cent chemically lean, and guaranteed gristle-free.
Garlick says the company will continue to build wholesale customers outside its own outlets and the major retailers so as not to have too many eggs in one basket.
“We have lots of
big plans. We’ve had export enquiries from countries like China and
the US, but until now we just haven’t have the capacity to take
orders like that.”
