Andersons Pie Shop & Caterers is a family-owned bakery and pie shop on Princes Street in Hāwera, serving award-winning pies and bakery products to Taranaki for over 50 years. The Anderson family's baking story began in the 1930s in Whangamomona, and in 1964 Brian Anderson bought the Black Cat Café in Hāwera, starting the retail pie tradition that became Andersons Pies. Today a team of 30 bakes up to 50,000 pies a week in a state-of-the-art Hāwera bakery, with an in-house butcher, on-site pastry making, and a strict no-substitutes, no-frozen-products approach.
The focus is firmly on fresh, local ingredients: New Zealand farm meat, boneless chicken breasts from a local poultry farm, and vegetables sourced on the day of cooking — including the real potato that tops their famous potato top pies. Alongside the pies, the bakery makes breads, buns, cakes and other bakery products, while its catering arm has been a mainstay at local weddings, parties, twenty-firsts and events since 1982. Visit the Princes Street store, call 06 278 5553, or order ahead through the EasyVend app.
On Princes Street in Hāwera, the smell of freshly baked pastry has been part of the town's routine for more than half a century. Andersons Pie Shop & Caterers is the home of the pies Taranaki locals call "pies to die for": award-winning, made with fresh local ingredients, and baked by a family that has been in the baking business since the 1930s.
Baking runs deep in the Anderson family. Joe and Nita Anderson purchased a bakery in Whangamomona in the 1930s, and their son Brian grew up in it, helping his father from the age of five and learning to make everything from breads and buns to cakes and pies. In 1964 Brian struck out on his own, purchasing the Black Cat Café on High Street in Hāwera and beginning to bake the retail pies the business would become famous for.
Demand rose quickly. By 1965 local dairies were asking to stock the pies wholesale, and in 1968 Brian moved to larger premises next door and renamed the business Andersons Pies. In 1982 the bakery relocated to its current home on Princes Street, where catering for weddings, parties and functions became part of the offer. Sons Mark, Grant, Phillip and Brendan all joined the business, and in 2000 Brian formed a partnership with his four sons that still drives the company today.
The secret, the family insists, is no secret at all: the best ingredients. The meat comes from New Zealand farms, the boneless chicken breasts from a local poultry farm, and every vegetable is sourced locally on the day of cooking — including the real potatoes used on top of their famous potato top pies. You will find no substitutes and no frozen products in this bakery.
There are no shortcuts in the process, which is carried out end to end in the state-of-the-art Hāwera bakery. An in-house butcher prepares the protein while the pastry is mixed, formed and sheeted on site. Fillings are gently cooked, the pies are delicately filled and lidded, and then baked to perfection — big flavour, good nutrition and the perfect eating temperature in every bite.
Scale has grown impressively: with a team of 30, Andersons bakes up to 50,000 pies a week, and the Princes Street premises have been extended over the years to include a new retail store, a separate butchery where fresh meat is prepared on site, and a dedicated chilled packing room. Still, the family stresses that the focus is quality over quantity, with recipes, ingredient supply and nutritional value developed with care.
Alongside the pies, the bakery turns out the breads, buns and cakes the Anderson family has made since its Whangamomona days, plus a wider range of bakery products. The catering arm has become a mainstay of local life, feeding weddings, twenty-firsts, parties and community events with what the family calls the two essentials of a great occasion: great people and great food.
The retail store at 144 Princes Street is where most people get their fix, whether that is a single hot pie or a batch for the whole family. Prefer to order ahead? Andersons offers ordering through the EasyVend app on both iOS and Android, and you can keep up with the bakery on Facebook. After more than 50 years of baking in Hāwera, this family bakery remains a genuine Taranaki institution — one real-potato-topped pie at a time.