The Wild Oatcake has been battered by rising gas and rent charges
13:41, 01 Oct 2025Updated 05:53, 05 Oct 2025
The Wild Oatcake owner Slim
The ‘heartbroken’ owner of an oatcake shop chain has stopped selling multi-packs of the Potteries delicacy – because he was losing more than ‘£1 per pack’. Slim owns The Wild Oatcake in Goldenhill and Shelton.
But the business is being battered by rising gas prices and staff hours have been cut.
Now The Wild Oatcake is no longer selling packs of half-a-dozen or a dozen oatcakes.
Slim said: “I need to take care of my family and my staff. I was losing over £1 per packet and I had held on as long as I could. Don’t get me wrong, this is a very, very busy business on the oatcakes to order and the takeaway and delivery service has been more successful over the last two years.
“The costs increased mainly because of Ukraine, and I’m worried I’ll be bankrupt if I carry on. I’m working out how to reduce the cost of making the oatcake packs because it’s not something I want to do as you can imagine – I don’t know how other people are doing it.
“Gas costs have increased to the region of about £240 a week. Rent has gone up, gas prices nearly doubled overnight when the war started in Ukraine, pork prices went up, and we kept the same quality ingredients, but many who survived had to swap their ingredients for lower quality.
“It’s a hard job to separate oatcake sales from kitchen sales, and it was costing me money because there are bills, the price of packaging and the ingredients. Our oatcakes are vegetarian and there’s no yeast in them. It’s still very busy for us because people like the hot food, but the problem is one’s propping the other up.
The Wild Oatcake has stopped selling packets of oatcakes.(Image: Yasmin Sarwar / StokeOnTrent Live)
“I’m hoping we could possibly have a cafe here in the future. Of course people want oatcakes because it’s a good meal for very little money, but unfortunately I’ve been paying for them. I feel for my staff because everyone’s got a family to look after, too. I might do some to order but they will be a lot more expensive to buy because one lady says she loves our pikelets so much she’ll pay double for them, and it’s embarrassing, but I said I’d do it for her.
“If anybody wishes to come up and speak to me face-to-face about the challenges we’re going through then they’re more than welcome to come in and have a chat, because trying to reply to everyone online is difficult. I’m not having a go, I’m just telling them basic facts. It affects our lives and for people to complain when they don’t really understand it hurts, because they haven’t seen what we’ve done to get this place to where it is and then be slated – we can’t do any more than our best.”
The Wild Oatcake branches are open every day from 7am until 2pm.
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