South London patty makers Flake Bake move into ready meals after Aldi win

Flake Bake, the Jamaican patty business run by father and son Pete and Mike Williams, is adding ready meals to its range, two years after winning Aldi’s Next Big Thing competition.

From Peckham patties to 4.5 million sales

The pair began in 2012, selling to their south London community and supplying handmade patties to Caribbean takeaways. Mike said they were the hidden faces behind many of those counters. Pete, who came to the UK in the 1980s as a baker, spent 10 years selling patties in Peckham and still acts as an adviser to his son.

The business was close to shutting when the Aldi contest, a show Mike said he had never heard of, changed its course. “We were thinking of closing the business but that changed everything,” he said. A manufacturer was found through the supermarket, and more than 4.5 million patties have been sold since September 2024. The handmade side of the business carries on.

Two flavours in the new ready meal range

The ready meals come in two versions: jerk chicken with rice and peas, and BBQ beef with sweet potato mash. Mike said the hard part was sourcing at scale, since jerk sauce for 25,000 units has to be accredited in the UK and cannot simply be bought from a local food shop. The answer was to build their own seasonings with several spice companies.

He wants the food to taste as close as possible to a home kitchen version, with the jerk sauce and the heat of Scotch bonnet peppers carrying the flavour.

Mike said there are three major Jamaican patty brands and the category is a difficult one to break into. He said that two years ago they were selling patties locally and now have a brand competing nationally. Of his father, he added: “my dad is watching his son now create something special for the community”.