Dutch migrants Annie and Peter Rijs founded Australian food company Patties Foods. Anna Maria (Annie) Rijs, née Vogels, was born in Haarlem on 15 August 1921. She was the youngest of three children, with older siblings Jan and Corrie. The family later moved to Amersfoort where Annie attended school.
Piet Antonius (Peter) Rijs was born on 20 June 1914. A baker and pastry chef, he owned his own store by the time he met Annie. Annie had heard Peter perform in the local choir and fell in love with his voice. Peter and Annie married after the end of the Second World War: first in a legal ceremony in December 1945 and again in a religious ceremony in September 1946. The couple had six children together, all boys: Adrian, Leo, Nick, Richard, Frank and Harry.
Migration to Australia
In 1956 the Rijs family – Peter, Annie and their five children (Annie was pregnant with their youngest son, Harry) – emigrated to Australia via an assisted passage scheme. They travelled onboard the Sibayak, arriving in Melbourne on 18 October. At the time, the couple’s children were all under ten years old, meaning the journey was an enormous undertaking. This was not made easier after arriving in Melbourne, when the family experienced an initial setback upon learning that the house they had been led to expect had been given to someone else. They were forced to search for accommodation elsewhere, eventually finding two rooms in a boarding house in Seaford.
A former colleague of Peter’s had also made the journey to Australia and helped Peter secure a job in the baking industry in Cheltenham, in Melbourne’s south-east. The family settled in Melbourne and after Seaford lived in Mornington and Cheltenham. However, their early years in Australia were difficult: Australian kids teased the boys at school, Annie managed six young children, and Peter worked long hours as a baker. Meanwhile, Annie also sought ways to bring in additional income. In her first venture she sold Dutch oliebollen to Australian beachgoers as “Dutch fruit doughnuts without a hole”. Later, she obtained jobs at a tomato sauce factory and a delicatessen store.
A rural turn
After living in Melbourne for four years the family moved to East Gippsland. Peter had found a new job as a baker in the small town of Bruthren, and Annie helped her husband run the bakery. The family lived in Bruthren for about three years, during which time they naturalised as Australian citizens (except for the youngest, Harry, who was born in Australia). They then moved to the nearby coastal town of Lakes Entrance. Peter found a new job and Annie again worked in the hospitality industry to supplement her husband’s earnings with additional cash.
Pattie’s Foods
In 1966 Peter and Annie bought a small store, Patties Cake Shop, in Lakes Entrance. Named for the previous owner’s wife, this store was the origin of one of Australia’s major food businesses: Patties Foods (now Patties Food Group). Annie and Peter instilled a strong work ethic in their children. Fifty years after they opened the store their son Richard remembered, “I was 13 when my parents took over the cake shop. I remember how nervous Mum was in that first week when the takings were only $100 and they still had to pay for their ingredients.”
Patties Foods grew and grew. The company moved to Bairnsdale in 1985, and is still headquartered there today. The following year the family began supplying pies to Melbourne. In 2016 youngest son Harry described how his parents – and he and his brothers, all of whom have worked in the company – expanded the company. Harry told the ABC, “We started in frozen pies in the late ’80s, but really launched into the national market in the ’90s. First of all in Victoria in ’92 and then by ’95 we’d gone national […] By the mid to late ’90s we had about 15 per cent market share in Victoria. That was the Patties brand, it was frozen groceries where we made our mark. We made a lot of ground with our party pies and finger foods.”
In 2006 the company debuted on the Australian Stock Exchange as Patties Foods, although a decade later it reverted to a private company. Over the years Patties Foods incorporated several brands, notably Four’N Twenty, Herbert Adams, Wedgwood, Nanna’s, Leader Food, Creative Gourmet, and Boscastle. In 2022 Patties Foods was itself acquired by PAG, an Asian investment group.
50 years on
Patties Foods celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 2016, at which time it reportedly produced 4.5 million pies per week. However, neither Annie nor Peter Rijs lived to see the company’s 50th anniversary. Peter had passed away in January 1985, while Annie lived until the age of 91 in 2013. The couple is buried together in the Lakes Entrance Garden Cemetery.
Selected additional sources
- Emigration card record of P.A. Rijs, Nationaal Archief (The Hague)
- Adrian Rijs, “How Dutch migrant made a new life”, obituary for Annie Rijs, The Sydney Morning Herald, 25 January 2013.
- “Our Story”, Patties Food Group, https://www.pattiesfoodgroup.com/about-us
- “Annie Rijs”, Lakes Entrance Regional Historical Society, https://www.lakeshistory.com/annie-rijs/
- Trisha Harris, “Patties Foods celebrates 50 years”, 15 August 2016, https://www.c-store.com.au/patties-foods-celebrates-50-years/
- “Happy half a century, Patties”, Baking Business, 1 October 2016, https://bakingbusiness.com.au/happy-half-a-century-patties/
- “1966 Patties Pies founded in Gippsland”, Australian Food Timeline, https://australianfoodtimeline.com.au/patties-pies/
- FindAGrave memorial for Peter Rijs
- FindAGrave memorial for Annie Rijs
- Death notice for Anna Maria ‘Annie’ Rijs (Vogels)
See also: Keith Paulusse’s take on Annie Rijs’ story.
