“I never thought a shop in a housing estate would take us to Japan” - Inside Scottish butcher that’s home to ‘best pie’ in the UK
Ahead of the 2026 British Pie Awards, Rosalind Erskine chatted to the supreme champion from 2025 and found not only award-winning pies but a bustling butcher shop in the heart of a local community.
“ The shop was developed for this community at the start, so we feel that our customers need to be part of our journey,” said Paul Boyle, co-owner of Boghall Butchers in Bathgate. The journey is not just of the evolution of this family business, but the development of their pies - one of which gained them the supreme champion ‘pie of pies’ accolade at the 2025 British Pie Awards.
A butcher shop in the middle of a housing estate in Bathgate is maybe not where you might expect to find the UK’s best pie, but this is where the reigning champions are located. In March last year Boghall Butchers were crowned overall winners at the 2025 British Pie Awards with their kebab pie.
This year the family-run butcher, which also makes an array of other pies, ready-meals and is home to a small bakery counter, is just done celebrating 50 years of serving the local community. It’s this community that’s key to their pie and business success, as co-owner Paul Boyle said: “The business was started by my mother and father in 1975. I came along about two years after that, so we’ve been celebrating our 50th anniversary and it’s been a whirlwind year as we supreme champions at Melton Mowbray.
“When my father started off, he was mostly selling butcher meat but this is quite a young community out here so we started making a few pies and it built up and built up until we were doing as many pies and savouries as we were red meat.
“Over the last 15 years, we started a chef in here as well and we developed into the ready meal market too so really, we’re trying to have everything under the one roof for this community. Certainly word has spread and people come from all over west lothian. We’re delighted with how busy the shop is.”
Whilst the business is coming up for 51 years old, and is very busy, what really put it on the pie map in Scotland was winning the 2005 World Championship Scotch Pie. Mr Boyle said that it was this that “gave us the bug for competitions.” He said: “ The biggest prize that we won in those days was the 2005 World Scotch Pie Championship.
“We won it and that's really what made our shop. We went from a staff of four to a staff of eight to 10 people working for us. It caused a huge impact on our business. When we won that competition, we kept on going. We got the bug for competitions.”
With the Scotch Pie Championship celebrating the traditional pie, the Melton Mowbray competition invites pie makers across the UK to enter all kinds of pies to be in with a chance to win the supreme champion prize. This includes a trip to Japan to showcase the winning pie as part of the British food week in October at the Hankyu Department Store in Osaka.
The Boghall Butcher’s winning pie was a kebab creation, crafted by daughter Mariesha Boyle. She explained how she came up with the recipe, saying: “We knew Melton Mowbray was coming up and we were looking for something new and exciting. We thought ‘let’s see what we can make.’ We tried it (the kebab pie), we did a few tests, a few special recipes and eventually finessed it with our own blend of seasoning and some different chilli sauces. The sales of the kebab pie since we won have gone through the roof.”
The family-run business has been entering the British Pie Awards for 17 years before being crowned supreme champions - the first winners from Scotland.
Mr Boyle explained why the customers, who had been requesting a pie with a kebab meat filling, are so important. “You’ve really got to be selling the competition pie in the shop for about six months before because your customers have got to know that they enjoy it. Your customers are your best judges, and they'll tell you if they don't think they're good. We've been very happy to let the customers try them.
“I never thought that a shop here in a housing estate would take us to Japan last October, promoting our Supreme Champion Pies in the department store in Osaka. Marisha and I went there to the Hankyu department store, similar to a shop like Harrods. We sold over a 1000 pies a day and it was outstanding.”
The father and daughter team, and their staff, have developed a new pie for the 2026 British Pie Awards, a chicken shawarma pie, which will be pitted against over 1000 entries into 24 categories. Ms Boyle said: “ We're doing it in a deep fill casing, and we're working on the recipe. We've been doing it for quite a few weeks now, trying to finesse it and make sure it’s perfect for going down (to Melton Mowbray). The customers are enjoying it and we've been selling it here in the shop for a good few weeks now.”
The newly created pie will join ‘many others’ from these local butchers as they continue with their love of competitions. But what’s more evident is their standing in their community. When we visited, there was a non-stop stream of customers to the shop, where the produce is local, homemade and reasonably priced. Ms Boyle, who is set to take over when her father retires said: “ I've done 30 years now, I've got another 20 or more to do to catch up with dad. Hopefully we'll be carrying on the way of the business just now keeping it going just exactly the same.”
This is part of an upcoming episode of our podcast Scran. To listen, search Scran wherever you get your podcasts
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