Georgie Pie the restaurant

Masashi Hara, founder and guitarist of the Tokyo-based band Georgie Pie, spent a year after junior high school knocking around New Zealand, where he became addicted to the one dollar minced-meat pies home-cooked in kitchens like the one pictured here. Yum, eh? Never having had the pleasure of munching one of these treats, I have to take Masashi's word that they were damn tasty. Or at least cheap. A seventeen year old doesn't have a whole lotta cash to spend on the finer cuisines.

The Georgie Pie restaurant franchise was started with the modest hope was that it "would be New Zealand's own homegrown alternative to the global fast-food industry giants such as McDonald's, Pizza Hut and Burger King" although it was in many ways a copy-cat of McDonald's. Progressive Enterprises Ltd opened the first restaurant in Auckland in 1977, but Progressive expanded rapidly only in the 1990s, announcing plans in late 1994 to open 25 new outlets a year, reaching 114 by 1998. By the time Progressive decided to sell out, there were 32 outlets, employing about 1,300 people, 80% under 20 years old. In 1994, 26 restaurants were serving 600,000 pies a week.

Opinions differ as to why the chain collapsed, according to Progressive Enterprises Ltd president Graham Kelly, "Georgie Pie did not apply the same rigour to its real estate as it did to keeping down its labour costs and menu prices" . And furthermore, the expansion "was a decision taken without much logic. No one researched the pie, no one analysed how the pie was perceived. No one really thought through whether the pie suited the family restaurants image that Georgie Pie was trying to foster." He says the trend is away from hot fast foods, from red meat to white, and from stodgy to light, bland, foods.

On the other hand, Brian Popham, general manager of Georgie Pie until 1995, who describes himself as "one of the original creators of Georgie Pie", has a different view. "The reason Georgie Pie failed is that, with a structure geared for growth momentum, it could not sustain the massive 66% decline in customers over the last 12 months. The decline was caused by retail price increases that destroyed the value proposition and competitiveness. The curtailing of new development and the reduction in advertising compounded the downward spiral. No, not one-dollar pies or the pie itself, that's all nonsense. Chain fast food is an art and a science. They lost it. McDonald's got a 'Happy Meal' too cheap."

And then there is the NZ punk band WeDunno's explanation from their song McD'S VS GP'S-
WALKING DOWN THE STREET WITH ONLY ONE THING ON MY MIND
BUT WHAT DO YOU KNOW ITS ONLY MACCA'S THAT I FIND
COS RONALD McDONALD HAS BOUGHT OUT EVERYONE
THERES NO FUCKIN GEORGIE PIE UNDER THE SUN
ONE DOLLAR PIES AND ONE DOLLAR FRIES
AND ONE DOLLAR FUCKIN SHAKES
GETTING RID OF GEORGIE PIE WAS A BIG MISTAKE

Whatever the reason, Georgie Pie restaurants went belly up in 1996, with most of the properties sold to McDonalds.

Quotes and some other words happily plagiarized from here. Thanks canterbury.cyberplace dudes.
McDs vs GPs lyrics stolen unabashedly from http://www.angelfire.com/punk/wedunno/songs/
Many thanks to the twisted geniuses at WeDunno for sending me the song. 9 Kb mp3
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