Ma Stokeld’s savory British meat & veggie pies first entered the Oakland food scene well before there was a food scene, in 1962. Operating from a commercial kitchen on W. Macarthur Blvd, Chris Stokeld, an immigrant from North Yorkshire, England, began stamping out handcrafted pies and pasties with two of his brothers.
Fifty years later, Chris’s youngest daughter returned to Oakland to take an AmeriCorps position with Women’s Initiative for Self-Employment and subsequently took the course to open her own business. Combining the love for her father’s brand of savory pies and her interest in the burgeoning pop-up movement in Oakland, the Stokelds began selling through a compatible connection made with the Commonwealth Café & Public House, utilizing the commercial kitchen space, The Kitchener, a few blocks away. Now the business involves Chris as lead pie maker, his son Stanley baking and plating the pies and daughter Nellie taking orders and serving up the plates.
