Yatala Pies

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Yatala Pies has been a landmark in the Yatala area of Queensland Australia for more than 100 years. From humble beginnings as a small pie shop on the Pacific Highway, the company has relocated to large, modern, landscaped premises nearby (north Yatala exit when heading northbound on M1) and employs 60 staff. From modest sales of about 200 pies a day a little over a decade ago, the company now sells more than 2,000 pies a day, as well as hundreds of sweet pastries.

The Porter family took over the business back in the late 1980s and the store is now managed by Susan Porter. It features a drive through for travellers on the Pacific Motorway, which is often queued back out the entrance and down the road on weekends.

Yatala pies bakes several varieties including traditional meat, steak and mushroom, steak and kidney, and chicken and vegetable. Yatala also bakes vegetarian pies.

The Yatala pie store uses traditional ceramic pie ovens to bake their product, declining to use with more modern industrial ovens.

Yatala pies has been praised for the high genuine content of its product. It's not unusual to bite into a Yatala pie and find large chunks of A grade meat, huge succulent mushrooms or tasty pieces of fresh chicken. In comparison many mass-produced and frozen pies sold in supermarkets and at take aways contain inferior meat, and a high proportion of fat and gravy to make up the volume. Yatala's sweet pastries also contain a large genuine content. When you buy a snack sized apple pie at Yatala, you can be assured there is at least two whole apples in it!

Yatala products can be bought as individual servings (one snack sized pie), or as a family pie (serving up to four people). Snack pies are served hot and ready to eat, while family pies are sold cold and must be reheated by the customer. Family sized sweet pastries can also be purchased.

The Pacific Highway's bypassing of Beenleigh in the 1970s saw Yatala's tourist related businesses, including the Pie Shop, decline as traffic was moved a few hundred metres to the East. The upgrades to the Pacific Motorway in the 1990's saw a decline in the amount of visitors to Yatala Pies, as the new motorway closed the exit adjacent to the store and had no convenient off-ramp. In addition the Gold Coast council refused to allow Yatala to place signage on the nearest off-ramps, despite the fact that the nearest McDonalds store is prominently displayed on the off-ramp signs.

Yatala pies does very little in the way of advertising, not using any radio or television and rarely using print media. Curiosity and word of mouth has proven successful however, and Yatala Pies enjoys excellent patronage today.

The area has been championed by renowned journalist and pie-aficionado Penny Jones, despite her recent conflict with Steven "value ain't quality" Deare.