We Sell Pie.

As I have previously chronicled on this blog, we rolled into the opening of PJP Buttonwood without any real clue about what we were doing...except making pie.  It makes me think of that scene in When Harry Met Sally, when Harry says to Sally: "You're the worst kind (of woman); you are high maintenance, but you think you are low maintenance."  We thought we knew it all, but we really just didn't. We were opening a pie baking company, of that we were completely sure.  And so when our first customers walked into PJP Buttonwood and they looked around our space and said to us, "what all do you sell here?"...well, WHAT?  Because we think about/talk about/plan for pie every single day, we honestly expected our new customers to walk in and know exactly what we do at PJP...right down to the five inch Sour Cream Raisin pie.

There wasn't a sign to be found that listed what we could make.  We didn't even have a full list printed out on paper.  And stop laughing - it never even crossed our minds at any point before flipping the "open" sign (oh, and we didn't have one of those either until we had been open about a week...go figure).

It didn't take too long for us to figure out that we better memorize the list of the pies we make and be able to list them off in 30 seconds or less OR invest in some sort of signage in our space.  And because I'll take the path of least resistance every single time, I picked the "get a sign" path.  But what sort of sign?  What should it look like and where should we get it?  How much should we spend and where would we hang it?

After venturing down the path of lackluster sign options a few times (and a brief foray into chalkboard markers that we shall never discuss again), we explored the issue with Designer Extraordinaire, Caroline Leemis.  She came back with some ideas and they were all so good that we couldn't even decide which one to love the most.  After talking about vision and font and design, we had a plan.  And because she is magical, Caroline just made it happen (the whole just makes it happen thing is top on our list of things we love about her).  After waiting a few weeks for the elements to all arrive, she texted and said it was time to hang our new sign.  (Which is also how I got to mark "rent scaffolding" off my bucket list).  And here was the scene at PJP Buttonwood last Thursday:

Over the course of the next several hours, Caroline and Kelly Hoover from Uppercase Living painstakingly put every type of pie we currently make onto that wall of stainless steel.  And when they couldn't finish that afternoon, they started on Friday morning for Round 2.  There are simply no words to express our gratitude for their patience with a level and a zeal for making things look nice.  Had Jeanne and I tackled that wall, our words would have steadily slanted to the left or we wouldn't be speaking to each other by Friday at noon.

But look...

I know, right??  Not only is it pretty, it fits into our space perfectly by capturing the industrial feel of the space.  And it makes us feel like a legit business (oddly enough, navigating all of the rules to get a City of Columbia business license left me completely unfazed by put $750 worth of acrylic words on a wall and we are BUSINESS OWNERS).

Jokes aside, this new menu wall has completely transformed our entire space.  It feels larger in there and a little bit more like we know what we are doing (and it is a nice distraction for when we don't).

And there are 100% less awkward questions about what we do at PJP Buttonwood.