Yackandandah's Gum Tree Pies opened its first shop at 11 High Street last week. 

The couple opened Gum Tree Cafe at Keebles Nursery nine years ago and started experimenting with pies. 

"My sister recommended to my husband to start making his own pies because the frozen ones were awful," Mrs Nedziak said. 

"He kept experimenting with flavours and we started trying to sell them at farmers' markets and events,

"After a while the pies were actually keeping the cafe afloat,

"They were getting so popular we decided to cut the cafe loose and just make pies."

Gum Tree Pies offers 13 flavours of pies and outside the shop are sold at farmer's markets in Melbourne, Violet Town, Canberra, Bright and Wodonga. 

Mr Nedziak, a trained chef, cooks the fillings and makes the pies by hand with a team of employees. 

"We couldn’t do it all on our own,” Mrs Nedziak said. 

”Now we’ve had to extend, we are hiring locals which is great, providing opportunities for young people in town." 

Mrs Nedziak expects the production of pies to double as the store had now opened. 

"We make somewhere between 2000 to 3000 pies per week to sell at farmers' markets," she said. 

"If the shop keeps going like it it has, I expect we will be adding another 2000 to 3000 pies to our production." 

Along with their two daughters, Lily, 8 and Mia, 6, the Nedziaks were happy to take over the shop from John Dale who had been there for more than 45 years. 

"We were really sad when "Butcher" couldn’t sell the shop to another butcher but he was happy to see it go to locals," Mrs Nedziak said. 

"We waited a few years until the time was right to buy it,

"The local community has been really welcoming and have been excited about us coming in and having a store,

"We hope to continue to grow the business and streamline production. We are definitely very happy with the way it turned out."