Friends 'prove everyone wrong' as homemade pie business brings queues down the street

Friends have managed to revel in their success after opening a brand new food van for their homemade pies.

Stephen Bygrave, 42 and Danny Furlong, 38, launched The Lids & Co out of a small food van which serves pies made from scratch. The pair met 18 years ago when they were working as agency chefs and have stayed in touch ever since.

Working in the food industry, Ste worked as a head chef at city centre restaurants before launching the business with Danny. Based in Tuebrook in the north-east of Liverpool, the catering company pops up at festivals and events across the UK.

However, the lads recently enjoyed huge success with a local pop-up in Kirkby town centre, with queues down the street, the ECHO reports.

Ste said the food van was "absolutely rammed and sold out daily", adding "the whole town was absolutely buzzing" and customers were "begging them to come back."

The journey of The Lids & Co started eight months ago when Ste and Danny found a vintage van on Facebook marketplace. Describing themselves as "two local lads having a go", Ste and Danny have both worked as chefs for 25 years and decided it was time to do something different.

Ste said: "The pies are new to us. I supply staff to festivals and I know you need something different if it's going to work."

Their first event was at Aintree Racecourse and the pies went down a treat. Afterwards, they received an email inviting them to hold a pop-up in Kirkby town centre.

Ste said: "We had no expectations but we only local and we live round the corner. We were inundated. The first day was great and then every day was even better. We sold out - we had massive queues, people were buying the pies frozen to take home with them.

"We didn't know how Kirkby was going to be - it was unreal. We had such a range of people coming over from kids to elderly people coming over talking to us. It helped that we were local - people wanted to support us.

"Social media went crazy for us, people have been asking when we are coming back."

First announcing their plans for Kirkby, Ste said they were initially met with "a lot of negativity" from people who said: "People won't pay in Kirkby. People won't because of the cost. You've got to keep your prices low."

But Ste said: "We proved everyone wrong", adding that they dropped their prices for the event, because they are local to the area.

The Scouse pie has been the most popular, which is made with low-cooked braised lamb shoulder, onions, carrots, turnip, and potatoes in a rich minted gravy. It sold out every day of the pop-up event, but a close second was 'The Daddy' pie, made with braised, pulled beef brisket cooked in red wine, with blue cheese, pickled jalapeños, and sweet balsamic-glazed onions.

The Lids also offers a 'Balti Belter', made with marinated chicken thigh and sweet potato, infused with aromatic Indian spices in a rich tomato based sauce. The pies can be served with creamy mash, roast potatoes, salt and pepper fries and a range of other sides, before being topped with minted peas, red wine gravy, curry sauce or cheesy beans.

Ste and Danny will be bringing The Lids to BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend Festival at Sefton Park later this month, as well as Southport Food and Drink Festival and Rainford's Picnic in the Park.

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