Best pie is a win for all passionate small-business owners

Vaughn Davis is the creative director and owner of The Goat Farm Ltd advertising agency.

OPINION: And the award goes to …

I’m not a fan of awards. That makes me something of an outlier among ad agency owners. The advertising industry thrives on the things.

Some of the larger agencies even employ people almost year-round preparing lavish videos, not to run on TV or online, but to catch the eye of judging panels at international advertising awards.

As a big agency refugee, I’ve been part of that system. I’ve developed or overseen campaigns whose sole aim was to win awards.

I’ve flown to the south of France and sat in rooms full of peers watching expensively produced entry videos. I’ve dined and drank in auditoriums as colleagues and competitors have tottered back from the stage with those precious Perspex trinkets.

These days, as a smaller agency, chasing awards isn’t a priority. There are some awards, though, that I can completely get behind.

One such trophy is the one awarded this week for New Zealand’s Supreme Pie.

Patrick Lam, blessed be his name and peace and prosperity be upon his bakery, once again took top spot in the Bakel’s Supreme Pie Awards.

Just reading the description makes me want to close my laptop and go immediately to Tauranga to buy one. Roast duck, onion and mushroom. Roast duck! In a pie! Who needs gravy when just reading the words makes me drool?

Pat’s win was no fluke. Despite the judging being both blind and rigorous, this is the eighth time one of Pat’s pies has taken top spot. To quote chef and judge Al Brown in possibly the understatement of the decade, “I think he knows what he’s doing.”

Like many New Zealanders, I like a pie. But my affection for the Supreme Pie Award goes deeper than that.

Firstly, helping to create and promote the award was one of the first assignments I ever had as a freelance advertising creative.

Working for a small ad agency in Parnell, I was tasked with writing the letter and entry form that bakeries received along with the nifty folding box they used to ship their entries to the judging panel. I also sketched out the logo – two triumphant hands holding aloft a single, perfect pie.

A fair bit of professional polish later (I’m no designer), the logo that still adorns winning pie shops around the country was created.

Which brings me to the second reason I love the Supreme Pie Awards.

In the 27 years since the first Supreme Pie was awarded, the status of the pie, and the bakeries that make it, has been transformed.

No longer humble, the mince and potato-top staples have been joined by an explosion of new and delicious variants. If you can put it in a pie, someone has. The pie has grown from a handheld lunch for schoolkids or construction workers to a gourmet phenomenon – while still holding on to its blue-collar roots.

More importantly, though, is the transformation it’s brought to bakeries. With the odd exception, most pie bakeries are standalone, family-owned businesses. Often, they’re owned by recent arrivals to Aotearoa.

When I visit a bakery with a Supreme Pie Award certificate on display – and believe me, reader, I often do – I can almost taste the pride.

My local (Dairy Flat, but don’t tell anyone) has almost run out of wall space for its gold, silver and bronze awards. They bake from early morning to mid-afternoon, and at almost any time of the day the queue will stretch through the shop and into the car park.

Builders, farmers, horsey people, pilots from the nearby airfield, even advertising tossers like me, all lining up for a top-quality portion of pastry-wrapped satisfaction.

I’m not a fan of awards in general. But an award that celebrates pies, that recognises and awards the people who get up at three in the morning to make them for us, is one I can get behind.

Actually, maybe there’s one more. If creating the nation’s supreme pie not once but eight times doesn’t qualify a guy for New Zealander of the year, then I’ll eat my hat. But only if Pat Lam puts it in pastry and bakes it.