England in Kansas City: Looking Back on World Cup 2026
England based their World Cup camp here for a summer. Here's what it was like from the inside, and what a small pie business ended up doing about it.
Chris Thomas ·
For one summer, Kansas City was an England town.
The national team based their 2026 World Cup camp here. The English press came with them and set up in a media room a few miles from our kitchen. For a few weeks the metro had more English accents in it than at any point in its history, and a lot of them were looking for something that tasted like home.
The tournament’s over now. Here’s what it was actually like.
Why Kansas City
England needed a base — somewhere to train, somewhere the press could work, somewhere close enough to their group fixtures without moving camp every few days. Kansas City got it, and the announcement in February was genuine news here.
It made the local coverage immediately. FOX4, KSHB 41 and KCTV5 all ran it, and all three came looking for the same thing: someone local who’d have an opinion. A Yorkshireman running a British food business in the Northland turned out to fit.
What actually happened
We donated sausage rolls to feed the English media at a press conference.
That was the whole plan. Turn up, hand them out, let a room full of British journalists a very long way from home have something that tasted right.
They enjoyed them enough that we got invited back the following week. That second visit is the one that still doesn’t feel real — we managed to get them into the hands of several players, including the England captain.
Nothing special was laid on for it. What went to the England training ground was exactly what goes to Overland Park Farmers Market on a Saturday morning: traditional and spicy, made in our kitchen, same as every week. That was rather the point. If you’re giving English people something to remind them of home, it can’t be a performance. It has to be the actual thing.
There’s a full set of photos and the broadcast coverage here.
What it was like for a small business
Honestly? Mostly logistics.
Everyone imagines these situations as glamorous. Mostly it’s standing about holding a warm box, hoping the timing works, and trying not to be in anyone’s way. A training ground is full of people with actual jobs to do and none of them are there for your sausage rolls.
But there’s a moment — and it happened more than once — where somebody takes one, eats it, and their face changes. That isn’t a business thing. That’s what happens when you give someone food from home when they’re a long way from it.
What it left behind
The tournament’s finished and the camp’s packed up, but a few things stayed.
People found us. A lot of Kansas Citians discovered there was a British pie business in the Northland because a news segment about football mentioned it. Some of them are now regulars.
The expat network got tighter. There are more British people in the KC metro than you’d think, and a summer of shared fixtures introduced a lot of them to each other. And to us.
And we learned the shipping side works. England fans travelling in for matches ordered pies to where they were staying. Which proved something we’d suspected — that this doesn’t only work for people who can drive to a brewery on a Thursday.
Still here
We’re not a World Cup business and never were. The tournament was a strange, brilliant few weeks in the middle of the ordinary work of making pies.
That ordinary work carries on. Collect in Kansas City on a Thursday, catch us at a market or pop-up, or we’ll send it frozen overnight anywhere in the fifty states — including to England supporters who’ve gone home and can’t get a decent sausage roll where they are.
The photos, the video and the press coverage from that fortnight are all on the World Cup page.