Family-owned Garlo’s Pies comes to Victoria through Coles partnership

Australian family-owned and-operated pie company Garlo’s Pies is on an extra tasty mission to win over the hearts and tummies of Victorian locals, with the multi-million-dollar pie brand announcing that it has expanded into Victoria this month, exclusive to Coles, and just in time for the footy season.

Victorian pie lovers can now enjoy Garlo’s pies and sausage rolls in-store and online at 14 Coles stores across the state for the first time.

Garlo’s Pies was originally established by brothers Sean and Nathan Garlick along with their father Terry using the nickname of their surname “Garlo”, and the first store was opened as a pie shop in Maroubra, Sydney in March 2001.

Since then Garlo’s have so far sold over 100 million pies and makes approximately 7.5 million pies each year, using only Australian ingredients including genuine Aussie beef. Its employee count varies from 90-120 between summer and winter and as an all-Australian-owned and operated family business, Garlo’s Pies has eight direct family members working in the business.

The business went from being able to store 40 pallets on site to 400 pallets in September 2016 after moving from its head office and bakery situated at St. Peters, Sydney into a brand new facility in Kingsgrove, in the inner southwest of Sydney.

In 2016, SmartCompany reported that Garlo’s Pies turns over $15 million annually, with managing director and co-founder Sean Garlick confirming the figure is now about $20 million.

Garlick said the Garlo’s Pies team was excited by the expansion into Victoria.

“It’s been a long time coming and we’re very excited. We first went into Coles in 2009 in New South Wales and Queensland in around 2014 or so. 

“We finally got started in Coles in Victoria only two weeks ago and we’re very excited about running in select stores at the moment, but hopefully, sales going well, we could be in every store in Victoria by the end of the year. 

“These days with social media the way it is, we’ve had requests from Victoria for a long time. So to be able to get back to them and send them a list of stores that we’re currently in has been really satisfying. We’ve had some great correspondence from those that have been able to go in there and buy a pie.”

Garlick said Garlo’s Pies was heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and at one point expected the worst in regard to the viability and future of the business.

“The COVID pandemic was a shock to every business at the time. Nobody had a game plan as to how to handle COVID and nobody really knew what was going to happen,” he said.

However, the lockdown proved to be a boon for Garlo’s Pies and saw an increase in the levels of shopping at Coles and Woolworths stores across NSW and QLD.

Garlick said he remained proud of how Garlo’s Pies had weathered the COVID storm without letting a single employee go.

“We’re still very much a family business. We have eight family members working full-time in the business and we have lots of long-term staff,” he said.

“We were quite lucky that because we’re a food manufacturing business we didn’t have any of the COVID lockdowns that a lot of businesses faced. So that in itself was a stroke of luck more than anything, just in terms of what industry you’re in and whether you’re able to trade or not. So being able to continue to trade, we did a lot more home delivery care packages that were sent home direct to home that we’ve never done before. So it did allow us to have all of our staff which in the end was a blessing.”

Since 2013 Garlo’s Pies have exported its beef pies and sausage rolls to overseas nations, including Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, with its export channel being its biggest growth market within the business, growing 10% year on year since 2019. Prior to 2019, export only accounted for 1% of the business’s revenue. 

Garlick confirmed that recent interest from the US market is also firmly on the business agenda.