Brian Khoddam originally started Cravery Kitchen as a franchise business. However, he soon realized that what he really wanted to do was to focus on the wonderful Cravery potpies themselves and sell them through regular retail outlets. So, if your grocery store or supermarket isn’t carrying them yet, ask for them.
His career as an accountant with companies such as Ernst & Young and Office Depot was very successful, but a trip to South Africa started to change his professional direction. South Africans are avid fans of what are called in the Cornwall (British) tradition, meat pasties. Brian became a fan too, and his gustatory research took him to Australia and of course Great Britain to taste many different versions.
Back home, he got his uncle Hormoz, a pastry chef with Bristol Farms, excited about these pies too. They tried a lot of recipes for the crust and the filling. “Everybody in the family was getting lots of free potpies, while we experimented,” Brian laughs.
Brian wasn’t just intrigued by the taste; he also loved the fact that this type of “potpie” was meant to be eaten with your hands. A complete, nourishing, filling meal that could be eaten on the go sounded like a winning combination.
After the idea became a reality in Cravery Kitchen, other people became Brian’s business partners and the core management team: Chef Andrew Hunter, Nancy Peterson in production and quality control, and Christine Illuminato in sales and marketing. “We all have extensive food experience,” explains Christine. “And we’re all committed to the food industry.”
The four partners, including Brian, are also the taste team for each new recipe idea. To test their palates, Chef Andrew once made two complex pies exactly the same, but asked the team to judge between them. They had to write down their responses without comparing notes. When all of them came to the same conclusion, that they pies were identical, they had passed with flying colors.
Cravery Kitchen’s handheld potpies are fully baked. This is an important safety aspect, because it eliminates the danger that the consumer might not cook them to the required temperature for food safety. They just need to be heated and enjoyed.
All-natural, top quality meats, fresh vegetables and a flakey crust make Cravery Kitchen’s artisan potpies superior and unique. The reason the crust is so good is that the dough is folded multiple times and allowed to rest in between, a process that takes 3 days before the dough is ready to use to make the pies.
“We’re really proud of our potpies,” Christine says. “If you were going to make potpies at home, every ingredient is exactly what you would use for your family.”
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