As the Liverpool team walks into the tunnel at Anfield on Sunday for a game that will decide their Champions League fate, and Man City fans arrive at the Etihad for what could be Pep Guardiola’s last game, there will already be one winner.
Thanks to the thousands of match-day pies sold to fans of two of England’s biggest clubs, more prison leavers have a pathway to a better life.
“Every pie sold at Anfield and outside the Etihad helps us provide real jobs and real chances for people who want to turn their lives around,” says HM Pasties founder Lee Wakeham, who rebuilt his life after being released from prison over 25 years ago. “We’re providing a second chance for people who didn’t have a chance to start with.”
The Oldham-based bakery and social enterprise – where HMP stands for both Hand Made Pasties and His Majesty’s Pleasure – has been turning lives around since 2018, helping hundreds of ex-offenders find permanent work and heal from addiction and abuse. Lee, now 50, understands how hard it can be to get a second chance.
A survivor of sexual abuse, he grew up in the care system, lashing out at the world. He served two sentences for violent assaults, before finding a new path through therapy and hard work. “Coming out of prison can feel lonely, isolating,” Lee says, “that’s when there’s a danger of sliding back into old habits. Everyone who has been in prison needs support to start again – to overcome the reasons and trauma that have taken them there.
“Trying to do it alone doesn’t work. I’ve been there so I know what can work, and what people need. Working regular hours, regular pay, making a home – taking all of those steps are really important. But when you’re going home to an empty flat, when the working day has finished, that’s when things can get tricky. That’s when we need to provide even more support. A job is just part of the process so we have a Foundation that offers things like counselling too.”
Lee points out it makes as much sense for the tax-payer as it does for ex-offenders. “It costs more to keep people in prison than it does to help them create a new life,” he says. HM Pasties have just won gold at the 2026 Pie Awards. Showing us around pasty headquarters – where chefs are busy kneading dough, stirring giant vats of gravy and filling pies – Lee shares some of the stories that come with his close-knit pie-making team.
“One mum who came to work with us, had lost her children because of her offending,” Lee explains. “She got stuck in, and after 18 months she got her children back again. We’re very proud of playing a part in that.” On the factory floor, Richard (not his real name) says he is getting help for alcohol and drug use. “Working with HM Pasties has made me feel valued,” he says. “I’m not judged on my past and proud to be part of a team that’s growing. It’s giving me a focus in life.”
Lee adds: “The team here is proof that we can all do better, achieve more with the right people around us. We’ve built a successful business with award-winning products – that’s thanks to the work of our amazing employees and the support of everyone who buys one of our pies or pasties.”
Originally from Portsmouth, Lee didn’t dare tell his employer the truth when he came out of prison. When he left HMP Portland in 1999 and applied for a sales job, he decided not to declare his convictions – fearing he’d be rejected if he said he was an ex-offender. “I just hoped I could work hard and let them get to know me,” he explains, “So if they did find out, they’d be more likely to give me a chance.”
No-one ever did check his criminal record, and Lee says he excelled in the role before leaving to try and help others. He started working with ex-offenders via the Salford Prison Project and then the charity, Groundwork, in 2011, then left to create HM Pasties in 2017. “I put myself back at the gates of HM Portland, and thought, ‘what did I need?’,” he says. “‘What could have helped me?’ The answer was ‘access to secure employment, funds, safe temporary accommodation, a mentor, therapy…’
“The projects I’d worked with were great but they had some limitations – the strict drug testing involved set many people up to fail, many ex-offenders were still in need of support for trauma and addiction and I wanted to create something that showed better long-term success and could provide opportunities for women too.” Lee realised food production could be a way back for a wide range of people, so he rented a production space, bought some pie-making equipment and a cheap van.
It was a tough start – he handmade all the first orders, switching to a delivery service during Covid. But within a couple of years they’d gone from selling 300 pies and pasties a week, to 2,500. Their story caught the eye of big companies – with Manchester City FC, and independent Manchester brewer, Joseph Holt among the first to ask to work with them.
Now HMP Pasties supply 15,000 pies, pasties and sausage rolls a week to a range of big-name sports and football clubs, as well as the Co-Op and RHS Garden Bridgewater, and have hit a £1.2m turnover, with an aim of £4m in the near future. A £300,000 investment from the Greater Manchester Combined Authority helped fund a move to their Oldham premises in 2019 where they now employ 13 ex-offenders, some on license, others on day release.
They’re all paid the living wage and achieve health and safety training certificates and other formal skills to help them get jobs elsewhere too, while 25 per cent of all their profits goes to the HM Pasties Foundation. “The Foundation is vital,” Lee says. “It provides that additional, missing support.”
Lee’s pies-with-purpose are not only delighting home fans at the top of the table, but have given succour to Stockport County fans on their journey to promotion playoff at Wembley on Sunday. Lee has also come to terms with the ups and downs of life.
“The results aren’t immediate,” he said. “Not everyone will get there first time – that’s understandable – but we can hopefully provide a good start, the beginning of a new way of life. It’s like chucking a stone in someone’s pond. You won’t always see the ripples land and that’s okay.”
