Just under seven years ago, I left my career as an attorney and opened a pie bakery with my mom. In retrospect, that sounds INSANE. Good thing I didn’t know how much learning and hard work was ahead of me!

So, last year, we sold just over $750k in pie – pie ALONE. And that’s a lot of baking when you consider that every single thing we do is from scratch.

Here’s what I can tell you about baking:

It is ridiculously hard work – it is physically demanding and takes more concentration than you might ever guess. There is a reason that people rely on store-produced products and a reason why most grocery stores and big-box chains purchase their items from mass production factories – because true scratch baking isn’t easy. On an average day, I – along with a team of 10 employees – bake for at least six hours straight to stock our storefront. And then we have an entire afternoon staff arrive to do the prep work for the next day.

A Typical Day

Here is what I did yesterday:

• made 10 rounds of pie dough, because our recipe is proprietary to what we do and only myself, my mom, and my 18-year-old son know how to do it. It was my grandmother’s recipe!
• made 46 nine-inch pies and 90 five-inch pies, working off 11 different recipes
• checked in two separate food trucks full of all the from-scratch ingredients we need, like eggs, whole milk, pecans, and fresh fruit
• helped put all that food away
• washed a MOUNTAIN of dishes (our motto is if you make a load of dishes, you wash a load of dishes)
• quality checked pies produced by the other bakers
• boxed each pie and sealed with an ingredient sticker and a two-day shelf life “best by” sticker
• created an afternoon work list for the afternoon crew to make dutch apple topping, weigh out pie shells, and refill ingredient bins
• cleaned up my baking area and supervised the total kitchen clean up
• oh, and answered the phone, waited on customers, and served as the general captain of the ship since I’m the owner.

And that’s for a Monday. For a Friday, please multiple all that by 10. True story.

Bakery Shop Owner – Kurt Anderson

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