The price of a meat pie is on the rise

The cost of producing the humble meat pie continues to rise, with beef mince prices up by more than 19 percent in a year, according to Stats NZ figures.

On average the price of one kilo of beef mince costs $21.97 in July 2025, about $3.50 more than a year ago, with mince at some outlets going for $30 a kilogram.

John Williams from Auckland's world famous Muzza Pies told RNZ's Checkpoint the store was able to keep its mince pie prices the same as last year at $6.50 - as it looked to make savings elsewhere.

But with the price of beef steak up by 24.6 percent in a year, Williams said they had to charge more for their steak pies and was now selling them for $7.70.

"With moments like this, we haven't passed it on with the mince, we did with the steak because it was such a really high amount, but we didn't increase it by that much.

"But things like mince, we've just kept it at that price for now and will just watch what happens in the future. So we don't have a knee-jerk reaction and then all of a sudden it may drop."

He said the store went through a fair amount of steak, "so we do notice it" when the price spikes.

"So we are looking at what other things we can do to try and be more efficient, not cutting any costs anywhere in terms of quality but where can we actually find areas that we were lacking in the past. So we don't have to pass it on to the customer, but be smarter for the customer."

With the colder winter weather, the store is still getting queues out the door for the lunchtime rush, but Williams said it was never easy to keep costs under control.

"We notice it ourselves when we go to the supermarket, no matter where we go. It's a tough time, but trying to keep costs down as much as possible, that's a real difficult part.

"It's a good challenge running a business, because whenever there's a problem, that's our opportunity to find new solution, which could possibly be a new opportunity in the future."

He said they were hoping they could keep from raising the price of the mince pie until costs settled.

"We're just going to wait a month or two and really see what happens there. Because the price of eggs just skyrocketed when they weren't using caged eggs anymore, and then slowly the price came down, so hopefully, fingers crossed it might settle down like that, so who knows?"

Other potential pie ingredients have also jumped in price. The average price of a 500g block of butter has gone up more than 42 percent, while a kilogram of cheese has gone up almost 30 percent.

"It's a tough business to be in," said Williams.

But he said the customers had been understanding about that pressure.

"When we raised the price of steak, we didn't notice anybody saying too much, because they understand that we're being as fair as we can."