Eleven years ago this October, London Calling Pasty Company opened its food trailer doors on a bright, clear morning at 11 am. Our first customer was a friend and local musician, Lee Worman and he ordered the Traditional pasty. This was memorable and appropriate for many reasons, not the least of which was that Lee has a radio program on NPR called “The Gold Ring” (and has since 1982) which highlights traditional Celtic and British Isles music. Then our dear friends Linda and Steve Widders, also musicians, bought Shepherd’s Pies. We were honored. We were not sure how the day would go after that, but we had made our first two sales! To our relief and utter elation, the evening brought a line of people that wrapped around our double decker bus which served as seating for our guests. I remember it was chilly outside, but it did not deter our old friends, new friends, family and their friends who lined up to try the pasties. I still remember them shouting “hi” through the food truck window. It was so exhilarating. We had officially begun our journey with the Cornish pasty and our journey has literally not stopped since that day.
Well…it did stop for a short time. Our original business plan was that I would make 50 pasties a day and my English business partner (and brother in law) Neil, would sell 50 pasties a day. With that in mind, I had made enough pasties for the week on the day we opened our doors. Here was the problem. We opened on a Friday and we were sold out by Sunday. Though a good problem to have, this led to an emergency meeting on the top deck of the double decker bus (this would not be the last emergency meeting held there) which led to my realization that I was the only one who knew how to make the pasties and it had taken me all week to make 350 pasties and we could not open back up until we had more pasties and “oh my gosh” I had to recruit some help.
I will forever be indebted to my angel mother, sister and longtime family friends who came rushing to help. They started hand cutting potatoes, onion, rutabaga and steak, boiling chicken, chopping celery, weighing flour and butter and salt and checking in orders. I started teaching my sister how to crimp a pasty and make dough. My mother and sister would help on all levels in the following years through wind, rain, snowstorms and other types of storms. They are rock solid in their support to this day. It took us a couple of weeks to get back to the point that we could open back up on any reliable schedule. Slowly but surely, I hired and trained a crew to make filling, a crew to make the dough and a crew to crimp pasties. For the first year, the kitchen crew worked in the back of the food trailer. It had been converted into a commercial kitchen. Neil sold out of the front of the food trailer. A curtain separated the servers from the kitchen crew in an attempt to keep the butter filled dough from melting during the warmer days.
Today we have made and sold over a half of a million pasties. It’s hard to believe that is even possible. We still make them by hand. We still make the filling with fresh ingredients. However, we now work from a central kitchen with all the proper equipment, air conditioning and a fantastic crew that knows exactly what to do when the stocks of pasties get low.
The following years have brought continued support from customers, vendors, business associates, employees, landlords and the community, many whom have become good friends. The years have also brought lots of growth. We have purchased a total of 3 mobile trucks, developed a commercial kitchen, opened a mall location then 6 years later moved it into a food hall in Nixa. We are still blessed and thankful for the lines of customers that form as we have moved outside of Springfield into the surrounding communities with our mobile trucks.
There has been change and growth but we remain steadfast in our dream to share our love of the pasty and other “Wow” British products with Americans and to build London Calling into a name our guests can trust to always serve a quality product that allows them to “Take a Bite Out of Britain”.