A van containing 2,500 pies destined for a Christmas market has been stolen, prompting an appeal from a Michelin-starred chef.

Tommy Banks, who runs award-winning restaurants in North Yorkshire, says “nearly a tonne” of pies, worth £25,000 in total, were taken after the van was driven away from Barker Business Park in Melmerby on Sunday night.

The refrigerated vehicle was due to make a delivery to the chef’s pop-up pie stall at York Christmas Market, however staff found it had vanished on Monday morning.

“The team are very gutted because it’s days and days of work gone,” he told the BBC.

“Vans get replaced on insurance but all that work and all those ingredients, just nicked.”

The stolen items, which included steak and ale pies, turkey and cranberry pies and butternut squash pies, would have been enough to stock Tommy’s Pie Shop for a week, according to the chef.

He continued: “The thing that I’m gutted about especially is, what are they going to do with them, are they going to dump them somewhere?

“It’s just a real shame.”

North Yorkshire Police said it had been informed of the theft and asked anyone with information to get in touch.

“The guys are absolutely scrambling but I think we have enough to get through today and we’re just working like crazy to make more,” he said.

“Hopefully we’ll be able to stock ourselves back up again.”

Mr Banks put out a video message on social media appealing for the thieves to “do the right thing” and donate the pies to a community centre to avoid thousands of meals going to waste.

“I know they’ve gone now and we obviously aren’t going to recover them to sell them,” Mr Banks said.

“I just think that’s 2,500 people we could feed and there’s a lot of people who could do with a hot meal right now. If we can find them, they can have them.”

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