Apprentice Star Closes Pie Shop Taking £100,000 a Year

A pie shop turning over £100,000 a year is closing its doors, and its owner — a former contestant on The Apprentice — says the increase in employers' National Insurance pushed him over the edge.

Paul Bowen, who appeared on The Apprentice in 2024 and owns Bowen Pies in Chorley, Lancashire, announced the closure of one of his three shops, on Market Street, in a social media post addressed to Prime Minister Andy Burnham. He called the National Insurance increase "the tipping edge".

"We were already trying to cover everything else going up. Then the government made it more expensive to employ people," Bowen wrote.

Burnham responded directly: "I am listening and I'm sorry it has got to the point that you need to close your doors."

Why is a profitable shop closing?

Bowen's arithmetic is blunt. The Market Street outlet used to sustain itself. Now a stack of fixed costs — employer's National Insurance, energy bills, business rates and wages — consumes what the £100,000 annual takings once covered.

"Years ago, this shop would tick over and pay its way. Now, with employer's National Insurance, energy bills, business rates, wages and everything else, there just isn't enough left," he said.

He framed Chorley as a symptom of a wider problem: "Look around Chorley or your home town. How many shops have 'To Let' signs in the windows?"

On energy prices, Bowen pressed the prime minister directly: "What are you actually doing to bring those down?"

What does the owner want from government?

Bowen set out four specific demands:

• Scrap or significantly reduce employer's National Insurance for small businesses
• Reduce business rates
• Ease the VAT burden
• Get business energy costs down

"Let us grow. Let us take people on. Let us have something left to put back into the business," he wrote.

How did the prime minister respond?

Burnham conceded the pattern extends well beyond Lancashire. "You're right that what you are seeing in Chorley is happening across the country," he said.

He described the visible toll: "Empty shops, family businesses closing, and buildings that have been left neglected for too long. We've all walked past them and thought: 'Someone should do something about that.'"

His answer is a £210 million investment, announced the day before the exchange, to bring neglected high street buildings back into use — converting empty spaces into community hubs, health centres, shared workspaces, cafés and what he called "the local services people actually want to see".

Burnham closed with a nod to how voters judge economic policy: "I know people don't measure growth on a spreadsheet, they measure it on their high street. I'm determined to restore that pride."

What happens next?

The exchange leaves a gap between the two men's framing. Bowen wants the cost base of running a small shop lowered — NI, rates, VAT and energy. Burnham's £210 million programme targets the supply of usable high street property, not the operating costs of the businesses inside it. Unless the government moves on the levies Bowen named, other shop owners running the same sums on similar turnover are likely to reach the same conclusion he did.