Jimmy’s Pies is back up and running this morning after three days of no pie-making.
The owner of the southern institution, Dennis Kirkpatrick, said the Roxburgh bakery had been shut because there was no water or working sewerage system due to Sunday’s flash flooding.
The bakery makes about 20,000 pies a day and work starts at 4am.
It operates five days a week.
The first pies would be out the bakery door at 7.30am to be delivered all around the South Island, Mr Kirkpatrick said. He thought the authorities had dealt with the flooding situation well. Only one thing had disappointed him.
"The guys fixing the water pipes have come down looking for their hot pie for smoko," Mr Kirkpatrick said.
However, he had to turn them away.
Mr Kirkpatrick said the bakery’s water was turned on about 3.15pm yesterday but the factory would use a supplied tank of fresh water until it was certain the tap water was safe.
Mr Kirkpatrick said the bakery was not badly affected by the flooding.
It was flood-proofed after the 1978 Roxburgh flood.The retail shop in Roxburgh would open this morning.
Jimmy’s delivers pies to dairies and supermarkets south of Timaru and to all Night ‘n’ Day stores around the South Island. All its pies are made at the Roxburgh bakery.
There had been some shops selling Jimmy’s Pies since Sunday. But Mr Kirkpatrick said these would not have been fresh—they would have been delivered fresh on Friday or Monday or been frozen.
Even though customers might have missed out on 60,000 pies in total, Mr Kirkpatrick was not deterred.
"They’ll buy 10 next time they come in," he said.
