If You Were Curious...
We were back at it today after a two day break - our first since the new year. A few weeks ago, Jason and I took a Monday off, just to have a normal two day weekend and it was a delight - but both PJPs were on our minds all day. With the stores closed Sunday and yesterday, the mental break was 10 out of 10. Is that bad to say about our stores? It is like leaving kids with a babysitter…even when you are out, you are thinking about how it is going at home. But if you leave them with grandparents, the relaxation is next level. I think this is just a convoluted metaphor to say that national holidays are the entrepreneurial equivalent of a grandparent.
Here’s a few interesting things:
The winner of last week’s Epic Pie Tasting was a Strawberry Lemonade pie, which averaged 4.67 out of 5 on the returned surveys. The second most popular was a Summer Berry - a combination of blackberry, blueberry, raspberry, and strawberry. Both will rotate into the PJP shelves for the summer once I get recipes standardized for both stores.
And speaking of standardizing, we’ve found the standard weight of each fruit pie that is the perfect amount - not skimpy but not overly full to the point of boiling out of the crust. That’s one thing we never considered before having two stores, but now that we weigh each pie before it goes in the oven, it seems so obvious. We should have done it in one store ages ago, but hindsight is always 20/20.
Surprisingly, the lowest score of the six pie group was a Bacon Bourbon Pecan. Honestly, I suspected it would score well but overwhelmingly, most tasters didn’t care for it at all. Now we know. (Pina Colada also scored low, if you were curious.)
The shipping container was picked up on Friday and our hallway at Nifong is a heartbreak scene. The worst is the two Christmas trees. So embarrassing. (Also please note that Hy-Vee did not move any of their items behind their store to allow for painting. I’ll be watching.)
We were working on some data reporting today and realized that over 3,000 people have visited PJP West - or at least completed a transaction - since opening on February 9th. Is that not crazy to consider?