Povey's Oatcakes

The Staffordshire oatcake — the soft, griddled oat pancake the Potteries eat filled with cheese and bacon — has lost most of its old shopfronts, and Povey's is the strongest of the survivors. Steve Povey, a Leek man and local councillor, founded it in 1994; when he died in 2011 his son Alex took it over at twenty-three, and runs both ends of it today — the original shop on Biddulph High Street from seven each morning, and the Knypersley bakery from six, seven days a week. The BBC's Inside the Factory came to watch the batter poured, and the oatcakes now post internationally, Japan included, which is a long way for breakfast to travel. Hygiene inspectors called the handling very good as recently as November 2025.