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They’re as quintessentially Australian as thongs and cricket – but new data has revealed this classic snack could be on the way out.
The national accounts came out this month, and as always, the data includes a lot of very important information about things like per capita GDP and net national disposable income. But my favourite part is always meat pie spending.
If you know where to look, you find the national Bureau of Statistics tracks pie spending closely.
Recently it shows a structural collapse. Pie consumption is down a catastrophic 40 per cent from its peak, as the next chart shows.
Are we too good to get sauce and gravy all down our front in this era of Instagram? The data says yes.
As you can see, pie consumption was rising strongly pre-pandemic, albeit with a pattern where pies are more popular in football season.
There were two strong three-month periods over winter, then two weaker three-month periods in summer.
In the pandemic, it changed. In 2020, we ate loads of pies all year long.
But more recently, pie consumption fell hard. In winter 2022 we ate fewer pies, and then over summer there was an enormous collapse.
Did we burn our mouths on one time too many? Or did the price of a pie get too high in the sky? Pie prices have certainly risen. It certainly appears we are over the traditional pie.
What’s going on?
I got onto Patties Pies who own Four ‘N Twenty, and they insisted Aussies are still buying their wares.
“[I]n 2023 we are seeing even more Australians than ever enjoying a comforting pie,” said Anand Surujpal, GM of Marketing and Innovation at Patties Foods.
“Sales of Herbert Adams have grown by more than 20 per cent compared to the previous year and this weekend thousands of Aussies will pick up a Four’N Twenty as they cheer on their team at the footy.”
Meat pie sales are falling – fast. Picture: iStock
If that is true, it leaves us with a bit of a mystery, given that they own so many of the major meat pie brands.
The data above comes from supermarkets and bakeries and it doesn’t include takeaway shops. That’s important context for understanding the pandemic rise – trapped at home, we were buying pies from the supermarket, not the service station.
But it doesn’t explain why, post-pandemic, we are buying fewer supermarket and bakery pies than in 2017, 2018 and 2019. Unless we buy far more takeaway pies than ever before and fewer from supermarkets and bakeries?
Pies don’t seem to me like the kind of luxury you give up in a cost-of-living crisis – quite the opposite.
Popping a pie in the oven and having sauce that doesn’t cost 50 cents for a little squeezy pack feels frugal. A little treat instead of going out on the town.
Baker’s man
Could the higher price of pie filling explain it, or is it something else?
The rising price of beef and crust is no doubt making the pie business a very hard one (a Four’N Twenty is 25 per cent beef at a minimum, they promise).
But is this more of a cultural shift? Do we eat pizza more these days? Is the era of the meat pie fading, like a Four’N Twenty wrapper in the sun? The data certainly suggests so.
This is what makes the demise of the pie even sadder – Aussies are still spending a fortune on other types of prepared meals to eat at home.
As the next chart shows, we are loco for the other sorts of things you might pick up at a bakery – cheesymite scrolls and pizza slices, etc.
Just not the humble pie.
Other baked goods are going fine.
The counting house
Patties Foods is a proud company that makes Four’N Twenty pies in rural Victoria.
But Patties is not Australian-owned any more.
Once upon a time, it was listed on the Australian Stock Exchange, but in 2016 it was bought by a private equity company called Pacific Equity Partners.
In 2021, that owner sold it off to another private equity called Pacific Alliance Group (PAG), based in Hong Kong. They got Patties’ other brands in the deal: Herbert Adams, Nannas, Boscastle etc (and bought Lean Cuisine at the same time too).
PAG has form when it comes to selling off a company that suddenly drops dead. They were the owners of Dick Smith which they sold onto the stock market, only to have it collapse shortly afterwards.
It doesn’t get much more Aussie than Paul Hogan smashing a can of beer and meat pie.
Former Prime Minister Bob Hawke was also a meat pie fan.
Is that what happened here?
Well, as mentioned earlier, Patties Pies insist Aussies are still buying their pies. So long as that’s true, we can’t blame private equity this time.
Patties are spending up big on marketing – NBA player Ben Simmons is a brand ambassador for Four ‘N Twenty Pies, and so are the rock band The Living End. They’re trying to make meat pies cool and relevant.
But the data suggests that for most Australians, that marketing hasn’t cut through enough to make us want to take pies home.
For most Australian families, the pie has been … dropped.
Jason Murphy is an economist | @jasemurphy. He is the author of the book Incentivology.
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