Kris Furbert of the Bermuda Pie Company demonstrates the art of making a traditional Bermuda pie.
HAMILTON, Bermuda--Kris Furbert is looking for a new restaurant to continue making the meals that have made Bermuda Pie Company a hit.
An accident shut the kitchen the company had been using at St. George’s Cricket Club about three weeks ago.
Furbert was fortunate to find a temporary spot to make his savoury pies full of “traditional, home-grown” ingredients but he has had to put his award-winning hamburgers, fishcakes and other local dishes on hold.
“One of the floors in the building collapsed. The building itself is extremely old and with a restaurant sometimes you have very heavy equipment and I think over time it just weighed down on it and it just collapsed. Luckily nobody was hurt. It happened during the night so nobody was there,” he said.
Not only has the accident been a blow to the business that he started seven years ago with recipes and guidance from his father, Maurice Furbert, and his grandmother, Brenda Robinson, it has also slowed the progress of Pie It Forward, a programme he started to give back to schools.
“We sell mini pies to school kids – the teachers can buy pies if they want; the parents can buy pies – at a price that is cheaper than you can get in stores or at my location,” he explained.
“Ten per cent of all the revenue that I get goes back to the school. The schools are underfunded so they can put that towards supplies, or towards their programmes. I used to go in and give talks in front of the [Parent Teacher Associations – Ed.] PTAs about who I am and why I started Bermuda Pie Company and what I’d like to do with the school.
“So we’re trying to expand that programme. It’s not only that we’re coming and asking for money, we’re also giving back at the same time and I don’t think that’s something that anyone else is doing.”
As far back as he can remember, pies have always been a part of his family. It is likely where his interest stems from, Furbert said.
When he returned from university it became his idea to “rebuild Bermuda’s pie culture” as a way of preserving all the traditional recipes that become lost when loved ones die before recording them.
“Bermuda pies seemed to be on the verge of going extinct,” he said. “And that’s why I started the company – to rebuild Bermuda’s pie culture. Now we’re Bermuda’s largest seller of Bermuda pies, actual traditional Bermuda pies. Not every pie that you get or find out there is actually what I would call a Bermuda pie.”
For a pie to have that distinction, it must have a sweet pastry. The contrast with the savoury beef, mussel, lamb, chicken and other popular Bermuda Pie Company fillings appeals to locals in the same way as the mix of fishcakes and hot cross buns and cassava pie with chicken, Furbert believes.
“I think the whole sweet and savoury is a bit of a theme here,” he said.
While the chicken pie is the most popular, the most requested one is the lamb pie, which is called Slap in Chops.
He said: “That’s not one we make often but it flies off the shelves when we do have it. And then we have our Gombey pie, which is lobster, shrimp and scallops. So we’re not only trying to rebuild Bermuda’s pie culture, we’re trying to add a bit more variety.”
With the help of the Bermuda Economic Development Corporation, Furbert was able to find a temporary kitchen.
Although it is a shared space, Furbert is grateful that it allows Bermuda Pie Company to continue supplying pies to all MarketPlace stores, to Lindo’s in Warwick and Devonshire, to Belvin’s Variety stores and to People’s Pharmacy at both its store on Victoria Street and in King Edward VII Memorial Hospital.
“And we have a new catering menu. Traditionally, we’ve never publicly announced that we did other food, but we have just released our catering menu, which we have on our website. There’s a lot of local favourites, like peas and rice, mac and cheese, chicken, fish, and a bunch of other local products,” he said.
“We also won a ‘Best of Bermuda Award’ for hamburgers this year. I think we have a number of items that will eventually become Bermuda’s ‘best’, it’s just that Bermuda doesn’t know about them because we’ve been stuck in St. George’s.
“Not many people come to St. George’s, so they don’t know about us. We’ve had the same hamburger since 2021 and we finally got recognised for it in 2024. When we had our own kitchen, we would grind up our own hamburgers fresh every day.”
Furbert’s family got him started. His grandparents owned the St. George’s restaurant now called Mama Angie’s, and both of his parents cooked.
“One of the things that my parents used to make were pies. My mom used to make pies from my father’s recipe and sell them, back in the day, at his job site. She sold so many of these pies 35, 40 years ago, that the food trucks that used to show up at lunchtime to cater to the workmen would stop coming,” he said.
“After I finished university, I came back and I looked at the state of pies and growing up with somebody who was very heavily involved in making them I thought it was a shame.”
Furbert borrowed a bike and rode from Sandys to St. George’s asking questions at every restaurant that sold pies and discovered that sales were down from what they once were, largely because of quality.
“I didn’t know how I was going to do it but I made the decision to start Bermuda Pie Company back in 2015. It took me a couple years to get it off the ground but the whole goal was to rebuild Bermuda’s pie culture,” Furbert said.
“The demand is there. People like pies. They enjoy pies. In the grocery stores, when I’m delivering, before I can put the pies on the shelf somebody will come by and grab five or six. But it’s an item that was dying out because the quality wasn’t there, the flavour wasn’t there. There was actually not much love in them.”
He started the business out of his house, using Facebook to sell pies to his friends. Eventually he moved into a church and then space became available in St. George’s Cricket Club.
“We’re currently looking for a new kitchen in any location. Central would be preferable. But what I would like to ask the public is if anybody is aware of any vacant kitchens or soon-to-be-vacant kitchens or places that might be easily converted into a commercial kitchen space. They can reach out to us by e-mail [at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.] because we don’t have a working phone right now.” ~ The Royal Gazette ~
