Last updated 11.11.26
At 7.15 pm on Saturday, I was in an unfamiliar kitchen, staring at pies that wouldn’t come out of their tins, wondering what the hell I’d got myself into.
This wasn’t supposed to be how my Saturday night went. But then, stretching yourself rarely looks the way you imagine.
This was the first Scrumptious, a pop-up pie and mash night timed around a rugby match. On the surface, this looks like a food story. In reality, it turned out to be a live case study in what happens when you step outside your comfort zone, and why that matters just as much in your career as it does in a kitchen.
Feeding 60 people from an unfamiliar kitchen
Guests began arriving from half past six. Out front, it was exactly what we’d hoped for: people chatting, laughing, glasses clinking, all in anticipation of plates of pie and mash being served.
Out back, it was less serene.
The ovens behaved nothing like they had during the trials. Timings went out of the window. It was difficult to find the equipment we needed, and the pies were, frankly, a bugger to get out of their foil tins.
There were some properly tense moments. Moments when I wondered whether this had all been a terrible idea.
The part most people don’t see
What people didn’t see were the weeks leading up to the event. Working out how to make individual pies cook properly at scale. Testing pastry, tweaking fillings, adjusting seasoning. Doing the maths on quantities, timings and payments, and working out where everyone was going to sit.
All that prep meant we knew we could make good pies. We still had to find out how it felt to serve them to 60 people from a kitchen I’d never cooked in before. On the night, there was an interesting mix of anticipation, excitement and absolute dread that we might not be able to pull it off.
Friends and family served, cleared, washed up and calmly did whatever needed doing. By eight we’d fed everyone and were sitting down to our own post-match pie and mash.
The feedback made the chaos worthwhile. “Pies were to die for and the people were fabulous too.” “The pies were homemade, wholesome, and just so delicious.” “Beautiful pie, atmosphere, great evening.”
The ovens didn’t behave. But the evening worked.
Why this matters, even if you’re not running a pie night
In my career change coaching, I often talk to people who have an idea they’d like to explore but can’t yet picture themselves doing it. Perhaps they’re curious about another team’s work, or they’ve seen a role they’d love to try and aren’t sure how their experience would fit. Spending an hour with someone who does the job can tell them more about it than another evening looking at job descriptions. They might come away keen to find out more, or discover that the bit they thought they’d love barely features in a typical week.
So, what’s your pie night? What’s the thing you’ve been thinking about that might be worth testing? If there’s a project at work you’d love to get involved in, ask the person running it whether there’s one task you could help with. See what you enjoy, what surprises you and whether you’d like to do more of it.
