Secret recipe pies that have been the preserve of the community of St. Clears will soon be enjoyed Wales wide. Wholesalers have been lining up to spread the famous food afar. Selections of the variety of pies and pasties available from Philip Hughes Butchers, Pentre Road, St. Clears, have been winning gold standard awards at food fares across Wales. It's not only the traditional steak and gravy variety that has been tickling taste buds. Chicken and asparagus; lamb and mint; duck, pork and chicken and turkey and cranberry packed pies that have been whetting appetites too. As a result you are likely to meet the pie man from St. Clears wherever you travel soon. A brand name for the sought after food is being kept under wraps for another month. Philip Hughes is a family butcher's of more than 30 years in the small Carmarthenshire community of St. Clears. The pies and pasties are so popular from a couple of hundred a week they are now producing 1,500. With enquiries for their product coming from Cardiff and further afield, expansive new premises are nearing completion. New equipment is being installed that will quadruple business and there is room for even greater mushrooming in the future. The business has been able to develop the £96,000 new food processing plant alongside the existing Pentre Road, premises. Mr. Hughes, an executive board member with Carmarthenshire County Council, said it has long been a wish of the family to stretch wings and let their popular product become more widely known. His Mum, the late Patty Hughes, had been the first pie maker in the family butchery business. But what started as a couple of dozen pies to order in the early 1980s. Mr. Hughes explained his business was working miracles and at capacity in its existing premises and the only hope of achieving the expansion dreamed of was by taking advantage of £48,000s worth of property development grant. Carmarthenshire County Council and the Welsh Assembly Government have been working together to deliver the property development grant which they have funded together with Objective I and LRF. Business partner, Sue Raymond, has carried on the secret pie recipes and improved and added to the range evolving family sized pies that are proving extremely popular. Mr. Hughes said: "We are getting enquired from Maesteg and Bridgend and as far away as Cardiff from the wholesale market we have so far been unable to supply. We have been turning away much business." All that will change with a new food processing machines funded by a Welsh Assembly processing and marketing grant in place in the new building. It is a big step from the small family butchers with one just overworked delivery van. Mr. Hughes said: "Two more are joining the workforce making our strength seven and we are diversifying too with a range of fruit pies including apple, rhubarb blackberry and gooseberry." Council executive board member for regeneration Clive Scourfield said: "It just goes to show that these grants are available to all who have the courage to apply for them "Nearly £4 million of property development grants have been allocated to 18 projects over several years. "Premises and infrastructure has been improved but the true value of this regeneration is the employment and expansion enhancement for the businesses concerned. "It is so important that we keep these developing businesses in the county. They could so easily be lost elsewhere without the grant support."