The New Zealand pie is a single-serve meat and gravy filled pastry of varying ratios and proportions, traditionally served with liberal amounts of tomato sauce. The tomato sauce is similar to tomato ketchup but doesn't contain any of the spices.

Make an oval with the thumb and forefingers of both hands - this is the approximate size and shape of a Kiwi pie, and they are about an inch and a half in thickness.

These pies are consumed by people from all walks of life for lunch, or as half-time fare during a rugby match.

To cater to the overwhelming demand for this foodstuff, mobile vendors called piecarts, came into existence and to cash in on the overwhelming demand for Kiwi pies, entrepreneurs in the late 1980s tried to create a franchise, called Georgie Pie, in the style of McDonalds or Taco Bell - but with pies.

The enterprise folded in the mid 1990s.

Pies can also be found in dairies¹, lunch bars, bakeries and on Cook Strait ferries².

Common meat fillings are mince, or steak. Less common fillings are steak and kidney, steak and mushroom and bacon and egg.