A range of delicious sandwiches await customers at takeaway café Piece Out which recently celebrated its first birthday.
Based at Stirling Enterprise Park (STEP), the café serves freshly made deli sandwiches, breakfast bagels and baked goods including traybakes, biscuits and brownies.
There are also tasty salads and homemade soups to choose from as well as barista coffee and other hot and cold drinks.
Piece Out is run by long-time friends Stacie Costantini and Zara Malley who opened their business on February 28 last year.
The name comes from the colloquial word for a sandwich and harks back to the days when mothers living in Glasgow’s tenement flats would wrap sandwiches (usually filled with jam) in waxed paper and throw them from the window to their children playing in the streets several stories below.
Stacie says: “We had a couple of ideas for names for the café and decided on Piece Out because we wanted to concentrate the business on making really great sandwiches.
The name was a bit different and we went with it and it’s worked out perfectly.”
Zara and Stacie, who are both originally from Dunblane, have known each other since they were youngsters. Stacie previously worked in a variety of retail and management roles and become Manager of the Dunblane Centre in 2018.
When the Centre opened a café a few years later, Zara was employed to manage it and the two women found they worked well together.
Stacie says: “We were both interested in running our own business, we enjoyed baking and preparing food and so we thought we could set up our own café and started looking for suitable places.
A contact mentioned that a unit at STEP was available so we went to look at it and it was kitted out well having previously been used as a café. We made a few changes and added some equipment and the rest is history!”
Zara and Stacie work together daily in the café and also cater for events at weekends. They create fresh sandwiches and a different flavour of soup each day.
Sandwich options include ‘Fancy Pieces’ such as Coronation Chicken and the New Yorker while there are also ‘Classic Pieces’ including Ham Salad andPloughman’s. Meanwhile, the soups on offer range from Cauliflower and Minestrone to Leek & Potato and Lentil.
Zara says: “We make the sandwiches up fresh in front of customer which is part of the appeal and they can also pre-order online so we can have their food ready for when they pop in lunchtime.”
Stacie adds: “We’ve generally got a steady trickle of folk coming in and we have regulars from the STEP building and from the nearby units and garages. But there’s no doubt that the cost-of-living crisis has led to a drop in the number of people popping in for their takeaway lunch- although we are hoping that will pick up again soon.”
The women also have a second strand to their business making up delicious platters for corporate meetings and catering for events including weddings, birthday parties and children’s parties.
More details and an order form can be found on the website (www.pieceout.co.uk/catering) and the options include sandwich platters, cheese boards, pastries and savouries, soups, salads and sweet treats.
They have also recently added a new business named Graze In – www.grazein.co.uk – featuring handcrafted grazing tables and grazing platters which can be ordered for large events, as nibbles for a gathering at home or simply for a delicious lunch.
Piece Out are also part of a pilot scheme – with 14 other cafes across Stirling – which have joined forces to ditch disposable cups. For a £1 deposit, customers receive a blue reusable cup to use regularly, swap for a fresh one or return at any of the participating cafes to receive their deposit back.
More details about the scheme, which is run by Transition Stirling, are
available here – https://www.transitionstirling.org.uk/ditching-disposables
Piece Out, based at Unit 30 of STEP’s John Player Building, is open Tuesday to Friday from 8.30am until 2.30pm.
More details about the café and photos of the takeaway food on offer, which can also be ordered online, are on the website – www.pieceout.co.uk
There is also a Facebook page – www.facebook.com/pieceoutstirling
and Piece Out are on Instagram www.instagram.com/pieceoutstirling/ and Tik Tok – www.tiktok.com/@pieceoutstirling
