Covid Times - The last of the family owned F Cooke Pie and Mash shops in London.
Kim Cooke - co-owner and wife of Joe Cooke - 63 married into the Cooke family in 1976 and has been working in the family shop since she was 13 years old.
“Covid-19 has absolutely destroyed probably two thirds of business in the City and I’m not sure where they go from here? We are now working four days a week instead of six, we are hoping to resume to five days, but certainly not six. My husbands now retired and my staff basically run it and I am just here to oversee what goes on. Its throughout the City and its really sad, because we are the last standing one of the Cooke’s who started the business in 1862 and my children won’t go into it and that will be it.
I don’t know how long we can survive from now. There are up and coming Pie and Mash shops but they will never be the same as ours”.