It's In The Mail...
During the era of PJP at the Chapel Hill location, shipping pies was a substantial portion of the business. And remember that this was around 2002-ish, so shopping online was only a glimmer of what it has become today. At the time, you could buy a four-pack or six-pack of baby pies and they would be shipped fresh (no dry ice) to the recipient. Ordering was done via e-commerce (built by Behind-The-Scenes-Tech-Guru Jason, even back in the day!) and pies were shipped 2-day air all over the country, and even Canada on occasion. In fact, if you can still find a link to order on Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com/Peggy-Jeans-Pies-Berry-Delicious/dp/tech-data/B00064VHPM). I very much remember when Amazon agreed to add us to their marketplace and we thought we had made it to the BIG TIME. At some point after the shop closed, we asked Amazon to take down the link and they wouldn't because the email used to set it up was no longer valid. This may prove my point that it is easier to get Amazon to list something you make for sale than to get Amazon to STOP listing something you make for sale. So it was really an easy decision when it came to thinking about whether we wanted to offer shipping once established in our new location. (Spoiler Alert: The answer is heck yes, we want to offer shipping). But where to start?
Originally, PJP only shipped baby pies. This was a simple issue of logistics...the store only sold a 5-inch baby and a 12-inch large pie. Though Jeanne searched high and low, it proved impossible to find a company that could develop a shipping container capable of holding a 12-inch pie and withstand being dropped, jostled, tossed, and turned upside down as it traveled across the United States. The baby pies though...a company was able to develop a container that would nestle the baby pies in their own individual compartment and it protected the pie for the above mentioned jostling that occurs on planes and delivery vans. Sales of baby pies to be shipped soon skyrocketed because well, receiving a pie in the mail is fun.
Because we've added a 9-inch pie to the PJP family, we are currently working to find a company that could design a container that could make shipping one of those to your favorite person halfway across the country a reality (and sooner, rather than later). We are also doing some work with dry ice packaging to see how that impacts the delivery of the pie (and the shipping container costs). Ideally, we will ship both the baby pies and the 9-inch pies, so all of our hopes are basically hanging on container issues. We are hoping that 10 years of technological advancements have created some new options for shipping materials that protect the pies in the most cost-effective solution.
We are pretty excited though because shipping nationwide is the gateway to all sorts of ventures that compel us (hello, QVC, can you hear me? I would be super good at selling pies in four minute segments on your fine programming.)
We will keep you posted. (I didn't really plan for that pun, but I'm so not apologizing for it).
In other shipping related news, the chopped pecans shipped today. FINALLY. That this news was the highlight of my day could be the lamest thing I've ever admitted on the Internet. Unless someone buys me that Dowager Countess Appletini apple peeling machine and ships that sucker to me...in that case, I would probably just pitch a tent outside of the UPS building like people do for Black Friday sales). Then I would wait for the peeler to load on the truck, at which point I would abandon my tent and all of my shame and ride to the shop in the back of the UPS truck whilst snuggling the Dowager.
That would probably be more lame.