From the Classroom to the Kitchen: The Story Behind Our Business

From the Classroom to the Kitchen: The Story Behind Our Business

People often ask how Busy Food Company and Crowther's Pies came to exist. The honest answer is that it took a chef, a teacher, and a marriage - plus a shared belief that food, really good food, made by hand and served with care, can make any occasion feel special.

That's the version in a sentence. Here's the fuller one.

The Teacher

Before any of this, I was a primary school teacher. I loved it - the energy of a classroom, the relationships with children and families, the feeling of being useful in a direct and human way. I had never, ever thought about running a business - it genuinely wasn't on my radar. But when Ian - my husband, and a chef with thirty years behind him - started building the business, I found myself trying to help him alongside teaching full time, and that balancing act became too much.

What I had - what teaching had given me without me fully realising it - was the ability to communicate, to organise, to read a room, and to make people feel at ease. Useful skills in a classroom. As it turned out, equally useful when you're trying to convince a corporate client to trust you with their staff lunch, or when you're standing at a market stall on a Sunday morning making a first impression.

The Chef

Ian is my husband, and the other half of this story - he deserves a proper introduction.

He has been a professional chef for over 30 years, working across restaurants throughout the North of England. In that time, he has cooked at the highest levels imaginable - including, on two occasions, for the Queen.

Think about what that means for a moment. The precision required, the pressure, the standard expected. You don't get to cook for the monarch twice by being almost good enough.

When Ian makes a pie, or develops a new menu for an event, or works out how to feed a film crew of 20 people across three consecutive days, he's drawing on three decades of professional cooking at an extraordinary level. Our customers are the beneficiaries of that experience, whether they know it or not.

How We Fit Together

The way we divide the business makes sense once you know our backgrounds.

Ian is in the kitchen - and often out in front of customers too. He creates the menus, develops the Pie of the Month, oversees every element of food production, and at events you'll find him there in person, talking to people about the food he's made. That connection between the person who cooked it and the person eating it is something our customers genuinely value.

My role is the engine room behind the scenes. I manage our CRM, handle the marketing, run our social media, look after bookings and client relationships, and make sure the business behind the food runs as smoothly as the food itself. It's less visible than what Ian does, but without it the wheels come off quickly.

What works about our dynamic is that we each own our half completely, and trust the other to own theirs. It probably helps that we've been doing this - in one form or another - since long before the business existed. Between us, the whole business is covered.

What We've Built

Busy Food Company handles event and corporate catering - private celebrations, staff appreciation lunches, weddings, christenings, community events. The kind of work where showing up reliably and feeding people brilliantly is the whole job, and where word of mouth is everything.

Crowther's Pies has grown into something with its own identity and its own loyal following - people who come back every week because they know that a Crowther's pie is handmade, carefully thought through, and worth every penny. The Pie of the Month has become one of our most talked-about things: Ian's chance to push creatively, and our customers' chance to try something they wouldn't find anywhere else.

Our business is rooted in the Chorley community, and that community has been generous to us. The local schools, the markets, the corporate clients, the families who've trusted us with their most important occasions - we don't take any of it for granted.

The EVA Awards

Being named a finalist in the EVA Awards Hospitality category is one of my proudest achievements.

You spend so long with your head down, working - managing enquiries, planning events, writing social posts at 10pm, chasing invoices - that you don't often lift your eyes to look at how far you've come. The nomination did that for me. It made me look back at the classroom I used to stand in, and at the business we've built, and feel something I can only describe as quietly proud.

Ian doesn't say much about recognition. He'd rather the food speak for itself, and it does. But this felt like a moment worth marking - not just for me, but for both of us, and for everyone who's supported us along the way.

What I'd Say to Someone at the Beginning

If you're at a point where you're good at what you do but wondering whether there's something else - something more yours - I won't pretend the leap is straightforward. It isn't.

But find someone who complements you, whose strengths cover your gaps and whose gaps you can cover in return. Build something where both of you are doing what you're actually good at.

That's what we did. A teacher and a chef, married to each other long before we were business partners. Between us, we've figured out the rest.