One of the most popular pies and pasties shops in Ontario is opening its doors in Orillia later this month.
Cotswolds Pies and Pasties will be opening there this week, the third establishment for owner Brendan Mulholland, who also owns Cotswolds Cottage (Pies and Pasties) at 1111 Stellar Dr. in Newmarket and Campbells British Food & Tearoom in Barrie.
"A lot of the customers that we currently have in Barrie and Newmarket live in Orillia and have mentioned that we need to open a store here," he explained. "We make everything fresh and make it ourselves, which people really like."
Cotswolds will be serving traditional and high-quality pot pies to the Orillia community, Mulholland says.
"We don't make the ones with the pastry in the bottom," he said. "We have high quality, certainly Canadian, and locally sourced beef, chicken, and pork, and we make our own pasties as well."
Cotswolds will offer "grab-and-go" meals and delivery service through Uber and SkipTheDishes.
"Everything here we make fresh every day," Mulholland said. "It’s why people drive to our stores from as far as Owen Sound, Collingwood, Midland, and Huntsville."
Mulholland, originally from Glasgow, Scotland, also lives in Orillia, which is another reason why it made sense to bring Cotswolds to the Sunshine City.
"People love that we use nothing but Triple-A Canadian beef," he said. "The pies are made from old Scottish recipes that come from my family. Some of them are more than 100 years old."
Mulholland, 69, vows you won't find another pie with as much filling as the ones he makes.
"You are getting intense flavour," he said. "We cook the beef until it's almost falling apart, it's good-quality tender meats."
Every day, Cotswolds will offer two different homemade soups that come from Mulholland's family recipes, in addition to "quality" coffees.
Mulholland says there is a long and storied history of Scottish immigrants settling in Orillia, hence the annual Orillia Scottish Festival that draws big crowds each summer.
"I think that will help the business," Mulholland said. "But we get as many Canadian customers as we do Scottish and British."
Mulholland says Orillians can't wait for the new store to open later this month.
"The response has been overwhelming ever since we announced that we are going to open here," he said. "We've had a huge response; it's been bigger than I ever thought it would be."
