The Great British Shop

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The Great British Shop Explore the best of Britain in Halifax, Nova Scotia at The Great British Shop! Experience authentic UK flavours with us!

Award-winning British style baked goods made with fresh locally sourced meats await, as well as imported groceries and frozen food! Explore the best of Britain in Halifax at The Great British Shop! Located in the heart of the HRM, our family-owned business is your gateway to authentic British-style baked goods. Since opening our doors, we have been dedicated to bringing you a genuine taste of the UK, featuring award-winning British delicacies made with locally sourced meats and traditional ingredients. Our commitment to authenticity and quality has not only won us over 100 awards across Canada but has also endeared us to the fantastic Atlantic community. At The Great British Shop, we pride ourselves on creating a warm and welcoming atmosphere that celebrates the rich culinary heritage of Britain. Whether you're craving freshly baked sausage rolls, scones, or the classic meat pie, every item we serve is crafted with care and expertise to ensure you experience the true flavours of the UK. Our extensive selection of imported groceries and frozen foods adds to our diverse offerings, making us a one-stop shop for all your British food desires. We are incredibly thankful to the HRM and the wider Atlantic community for their phenomenal support. Your enthusiasm and patronage have helped us grow and continue to serve high-quality British goods. For those who have yet to visit us, we invite you to stop by or explore our offerings online at www.thegreatbritishshop.ca. Join us to experience the authenticity and charm of British cuisine right here in Halifax.

10/23/2026

In hindsight, reading out the ingredients while someone's eating haggis probably isn't Scotland's finest sales pitch😂

A few of our Scottish favourites made their way onto Halifax's Move ahead of Scotoberfest this weekend, including Irn Bru, our Scotch eggs, Bridies and a tin of haggis🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Peter absolutely demolished the haggis. Erin looked like she'd rather forget the entire experience😂

Thankfully, the Scotch egg and Bridie got a much warmer reception, although the latter somehow became a “birdie pie”.

Four years of making Bridies, and we've even got a sign in the shop explaining how to pronounce them. Clearly, we're making excellent progress 😂

Thanks for giving everything a go! Brilliant to see a bit of Scotland getting some love in Halifax this weekend. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

10/15/2026

A selection box before breakfast. Quality Street passed round the room. The good biscuits Mum was saving “for visitors”.

Some things still taste like Christmas at home. ❤️

Bring those little traditions to your Christmas in Canada, with your British favourites delivered to your door.

🎄 Christmas is now available to order. Shop your British favourites, delivered to your door, Canada-wide.

Before sitting down to read another one of our Facebook posts, you might want to make yourself a cup of tea. ☕After near...
10/09/2026

Before sitting down to read another one of our Facebook posts, you might want to make yourself a cup of tea. ☕

After nearly six years of following us, most of you already know we do tend to waffle on a bit.

So, for those of you with better things to do:

Three pallets of British food have arrived, the bakery and freezers are full, we’ve got TWO new Yorkshire Tea flavours, pumpkin tarts THIS WEEKEND ONLY and Christmas pre-orders coming with an early bird discount. Normal weekend hours. CLOSED Monday.

There. The sensible people can leave now.

For the rest of you…

Yorkshire Tea have been at it again.

We’ve just received Sticky Toffee Brew and Victoria Sponge Brew, joining Biscuit Brew, Cherry Bakewell Brew and Bedtime Brew.

We can already hear some of you wondering what was wrong with tea tasting of tea.

Fair question. 😂

That’s part of the THREE PALLETS of British stock that arrived this week. Other highlights include Mr Kipling French Fancies, Bakewell Tarts and Battenbergs, M&S Custard Creams and Bourbon Creams, Hobnobs and Toffee Crisp, plus loads of crisps, biscuits, chocolate and a whole load more that we’ll inevitably remember five minutes after posting this.

🎃 And our once-a-year pumpkin tarts are BACK.

They’re not traditionally British and they’re not what we’re known for, but we’re bloody good at them.

We make ONE batch, once a year and some of you absolutely adore them. They’re lovely little spiced pumpkin tarts with real, freshly whipped cream on top. Our small contribution to the pumpkin spice movement.

None of us here like pumpkin.

All of us love our pumpkin tarts.

We appreciate that makes very little sense, but there we are. 😂

They’re absolutely delectable and available this weekend only. Once this batch is gone, that’s us done for the year.

If you’re cooking a Thanksgiving roast, we’ve got Aunt Bessie’s roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings, stuffing balls, dumplings and chips plus Colman’s mustard, mint sauce, cranberry sauce and gravies. All those bits you remember you need approximately ten minutes after getting home from the shops.

And for our lovely vegetarian friends, we’ve got Quorn sausages, Quorn pieces and Linda McCartney pies too. 🌱

Of course, you could avoid the cooking altogether and have a Turkey Pie.

For years, we’ve been calling these our Thanksgiving Pies, Easter Pies and Christmas Pies, depending entirely on the calendar. Christmas would roll around and there we’d be, introducing you to a pie you’d already met at Thanksgiving.

Most of you clocked it.

Eventually, even we realised that joke had got old, which, given our occasionally cringy sense of humour, is saying something. 😂

So now we sell them all year round as Turkey Pies. You can call yours whatever you like.

They’re filled with turkey, cranberry sauce, Paxo stuffing and our poultry gravy, all wrapped in pastry. Absolutely glorious and now one of our most popular pies whatever the month.

The bakery is properly stocked for the weekend too, with Cornish pasties, sausage rolls, chicken pot pies, all your favourite steak pies, lots of scones, tarts and fresh cream cakes.

There is an unreasonable amount of food in this building.

And finally… Christmas. 🎄

Yes, we know it’s Thanksgiving.

Every year around now, our inbox gets inundated with questions about when Christmas is coming. Well, we have our largest-ever Christmas order on the way.

Over 40 pallets are somehow going to squeeze into this shop over the course of a couple of weeks.

It’s going to be absolute anarchy. 😂

Keep an eye on our website because Christmas pre-orders are going live with an early bird discount. You can get organised while we work out where the hell it’s all going.

We’re open our normal hours this weekend on Chain Lake Drive and CLOSED Monday for Thanksgiving.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! 🦃

Right, important question before you go:

Sticky Toffee Brew, Victoria Sponge Brew… or should Yorkshire Tea stop buggering about and just leave tea alone? 😂

201 Chain Lake Drive, Halifax, NS

Slowly but surely, we’re integrating into Nova Scotian society. 🇨🇦🇬🇧And one of the clearest signs is that we’ve now been...
10/06/2026

Slowly but surely, we’re integrating into Nova Scotian society. 🇨🇦🇬🇧

And one of the clearest signs is that we’ve now been here long enough to see someone getting into the water at the Halifax waterfront and immediately think:

“Ooooh… I wouldn’t go in there.”

No judgement. No mocking. Just that very specific little local reaction that apparently gets installed after you’ve lived here long enough.

We’re getting there.

And while the Scotch egg in this photo looks perfectly happy having a paddle beside Queen’s Marque, a quick public service announcement: If you ever find half a Scotch egg floating around in the water there, please do not eat it.

Our Scotch Eggs are actually one of the very few bakery products we don’t wholesale. They don’t freeze particularly well and they simply don’t have the shelf life we need for wholesale, so they remain a Halifax-only thing, available from us on Chain Lake Drive.

And they are ridiculously popular.

If you’ve never had one, a Scotch Egg is a hard-boiled egg wrapped in seasoned pork, rolled in breadcrumbs and fried.

Simple. Beige. British. Absolutely glorious.

And before the Scotch Egg Purity Committee gets its robes on:
Yes. We know.

A soft or jammy yolk is fantastic if you’re sitting in a lovely little country pub somewhere in England, it’s just been made fresh for you and there’s a pint sitting beside it.

Completely agree.

But walk into a bakery, high-street shop or supermarket back home and the Scotch eggs you’ll generally find are the hard-boiled version. Given that we are, unfortunately, a bakery in Bayers Lake and not a 400-year-old pub in the Cotswolds with a roaring fire and a Labrador asleep under the table, that’s the version we make too.

And bloody hell, they’re good.

Scotch Eggs. Made fresh in Halifax and available exclusively from our Chain Lake Drive shop.

Preferably eaten before they make it anywhere near the harbour. 😂

201 Chain Lake Drive, Halifax

154 British favourites in this week’s delivery. 109 returning after selling out. 🇬🇧Warburtons Crumpets, Hobnobs, Cadbury...
10/05/2026

154 British favourites in this week’s delivery. 109 returning after selling out. 🇬🇧

Warburtons Crumpets, Hobnobs, Cadbury Flake, M&S biscuits, Walkers crisps and plenty more. A good time to see whether that thing you’ve been missing is on the list.

There are some new additions coming too, including Yorkshire Tea Sticky Toffee Brew and Victoria Sponge Brew. We’re still having cake with ours. ☕

You can order from the delivery now. Look for “Arriving soon”, add your favourites and check out as normal. We’ll dispatch once your incoming items have arrived and your order is ready.

We’ve also launched GBS Rewards, starting at 3.5% back in rewards credit on eligible online purchases, with higher tiers earning up to 10%.

Have a browse, top up your favourites and let us bring a little taste of Britain to your door. We deliver across Canada. 📦

This stock is arriving over the next couple of days, it's available online today and arriving in store over the course of the week!

201 Chain Lake Drive, Halifax, NS

Pasties, pumpkin spice and proper good grub! 🇬🇧🎃We’ve got Cornish Pasties, Scotch Eggs, Sausage Rolls, Scotch Pies, all ...
10/02/2026

Pasties, pumpkin spice and proper good grub! 🇬🇧🎃

We’ve got Cornish Pasties, Scotch Eggs, Sausage Rolls, Scotch Pies, all your favourites!

We also have a couple of new items in Cheese & Onion Cornish Pasties and Pumpkin Spice Scones in the shop this weekend! Perfect for a cosy autumn lunch or an afternoon with the kettle on. ☕🍂

The counters are also packed with fresh baking, cream cakes, meat pies and sausage rolls. You might come in for a pasty, but we make no promises about what else will follow you home!

And don’t forget breakfast! Bacon, sausages, black pudding, white pudding and haggis… all the makings of a proper weekend fry-up!

Lunch sorted. Treats sorted. Breakfast sorted. That’s not overdoing it, that’s planning ahead!

Pop into The Great British Shop this weekend and pick up your favourites! ❤️🇬🇧

201 Chain Lake Drive, Halifax, NS

We love local. 🇬🇧🇨🇦Since opening four years ago, we’ve always tried to source locally wherever we can. Not because it ma...
10/01/2026

We love local. 🇬🇧🇨🇦

Since opening four years ago, we’ve always tried to source locally wherever we can. Not because it makes for a nice Facebook post, but because better ingredients generally make better food. Revolutionary stuff.

By now, plenty of you know our meat comes from Oulton’s in Windsor. We’ve built a brilliant relationship with them and genuinely believe the quality of their meat makes our products better.

The same thinking runs through the rest of the bakery.

Our cranberries come from Indian Garden Farms. Our blueberries and strawberries come from Millen Farms. And because we’re already out delivering wholesale every week, we’ll regularly come back via places like Noggins, Stirling Fruit Farms, Dave’s Fruit and Veg and Masstown Market with local produce for the bakery.

The strawberries are actually a perfect example.

In the early days we wanted the biggest strawberries we could find. A massive strawberry sitting on top of a tart looks bloody impressive.

Then last year we looked more closely at what we were buying (because of that yappy fella to the south) and realized that some of the strawberries we were picking up locally weren’t actually grown locally at all.

So we switched.

The Nova Scotia berries were smaller, which initially meant figuring out how to make the tart look just as good. Then we tasted them.

End of discussion.

These are proper strawberries. The kind that stain your fingers, your chopping board and occasionally your clothes red. Turns out flavour beats winning a strawberry beauty contest.

There’s also an important difference between “Made in Canada” and “Product of Canada”. Made in Canada means the final substantial transformation happened here and can include imported ingredients. Product of Canada is a much higher bar. All or virtually all major ingredients, processing and labour are Canadian. Even small amounts of ingredients that generally aren’t produced here, such as spices, can still qualify.

And that brings us to the stubborn little exception in our bakery... Black pepper. That’s basically it.

We have yet to locate a thriving Nova Scotian peppercorn plantation, but if you know of one, please send directions.

So the vast majority of what comes out of our bakery isn’t simply made here. It’s made here from ingredients grown, raised, milled and produced across Nova Scotia and Canada.

And when you buy one of those products, you’re not only supporting our little shop. A piece of that purchase goes back through the farms, producers and other local businesses we buy from too.

We’re pretty proud of that.

When you’re picking up our baked goods, are you coming to see us here in Halifax, or grabbing them from one of our fantastic retail partners?

And while we’re asking… is there somewhere you wish you could pick them up that we’re not in yet?

201 Chain Lake Drive, Halifax for those of you who want to brave Bayers Lake or HAVE to go to Costco anyway😂

Bake of the day: Cornish Pasty 🇬🇧If you ever wonder what we mean when we say we try to make our baked goods as Canadian ...
09/30/2026

Bake of the day: Cornish Pasty 🇬🇧

If you ever wonder what we mean when we say we try to make our baked goods as Canadian as possible, this is a pretty good example.

A Cornish pasty is basically Britain looking at a full dinner and deciding it would be considerably more useful if you could carry it around in pastry.

Ours starts with free range skirt steak from Oultons in Windsor, potatoes and swede from Noggins Farm in Wolfville, onions from Dave’s Fruit and Veg in Dartmouth and butter from COWS in PEI.

Then there’s Canadian flour from Cambridge, Ontario and the fats for our rough puff pastry from Regina, Saskatchewan.
So the ingredient list is basically a small Canadian road trip with a British accent.

And this is exactly how they go together. Raw steak, potato, onion, swede, butter, seasoning and pastry. No mystery beige filling. You can quite literally see dinner before we fold it up.

The only real argument is what we’re calling the yellow stuff.

Swede?
Rutabaga?
Turnip?

We’ve put all three on the graphic in the interests of international diplomacy.

Once it’s folded, crimped and baked, all of those ingredients cook together inside the pastry and you end up with one of the most recognisable British baked goods there is, made right here in Halifax with ingredients sourced from remarkably close to home.

And now for the important bit: what are you having with it?

Brown sauce, ketchup, gravy, nothing at all… or something that’s going to get you removed from the comments?

I will eat might straight from the fridge at any hour of the day. The only way I don't finish the whole thing is if I have to throw the crust at someone covering it in gravy!

201 Chain Lake Drive, Halifax

Getting a Scotch Pie onto the Harbour Hopper today is considerably easier than getting them made here in the first place...
09/28/2026

Getting a Scotch Pie onto the Harbour Hopper today is considerably easier than getting them made here in the first place 🐸

A proper Scotch pie is deceptively simple. Meat, crust, seasoning. That’s about it.

Which is probably why recreating one properly here in Halifax turned into such a ridiculous project.

First, we had to bring in specialist equipment from the UK. Then came the harder part: getting the crust right using Canadian ingredients.

We worked through different flours from different mills, tested batch after batch and tweaked the recipe until the texture was where it needed to be. Anyone who has ever tried to recreate a very specific British baked good in another country will know that “just use flour” is not, in fact, how that works.

There was a lot of trial and error, a lot of Scotch pies and a frankly unnecessary amount of conversation about pastry.

But we got there.

Now they’re made from scratch right here in Halifax using local beef, Canadian flour and Canadian ingredients almost all the way through.

Almost. There is exactly one ingredient in the entire recipe that isn’t Canadian: Black pepper. That’s it.

So although they’re one of the most recognisably Scottish things in our counter, they’re also one of the most Canadian things we make.

Traditional British baking.
Local Nova Scotia beef.
Canadian flour.
Made from scratch in Halifax.

Not just made in Canada. Very much a product of Canada. 🇨🇦

And after the journey it took to get them here, we figured the least we could do was show one around town. Harbour Hopper season might be slowing down, but you can still find our scotch pies in our counters, at many of our partners in and around downtown (Arthurs, Noggins on Coburg and across the water at O'Bee's) as well as partners across the province!

Important question though:

Brown sauce, gravy, beans, peas, nothing at all… or are you one of those people eating a Scotch pie cold straight from the fridge?

Bonus points if you've ever had one in a sandwich! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

201 Chain Lake Drive, Halifax

Bake of the day: Cheese & Onion Pasty 🇬🇧🧀🧅A proper UK staple and very firmly a staple on our counters too.Yes, it’s vege...
09/24/2026

Bake of the day: Cheese & Onion Pasty 🇬🇧🧀🧅

A proper UK staple and very firmly a staple on our counters too.

Yes, it’s vegetarian. But anyone from the UK will know cheese & onion has never really been “the vegetarian option”. It’s just cheese & onion. It’s been happily holding its own against the meatier stuff for decades without needing anyone to make a fuss about it.

Flaky puff pastry, creamy cheesy potato, chunky onions and enough seasoning to make the whole thing dangerously easy to demolish in the car before you’ve even made it out of Bayers Lake.

Cheese, onion and potato wrapped in pastry and declared a perfectly reasonable meal.

There’s something very British about that.

And, frankly, we stand by it.

Especially now the weather has finally started moving back into the “maybe I do want something hot wrapped in pastry” category.

So, important question:

Are you choosing Cheese & Onion because it’s vegetarian, or because it’s just bloody good?

201 Chain Lake Drive, Halifax

Address

201 Chain Lake Drive
Halifax, NS
B3S1C8

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 6pm
Tuesday 9am - 6pm
Wednesday 9am - 6pm
Thursday 9am - 6pm
Friday 9am - 6pm
Saturday 9am - 5pm
Sunday 10am - 5pm

Telephone

+18003989979

Website

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