National Pie Day

We are pretty well known for celebrating Pi(e) Day on March 14th (get it? 3/14 = 3.14 = pi?) by discounting all baked pies in our store by $3.14 for that day. It’s officially become a well-known tradition in Columbia, and at PJP Buttonwood long waits with lines backed up to Starbucks wasn’t uncommon. (And in our new larger location, can you even imagine? We should reach peak legendary status this year.)

One small wrinkle in the annual plan is that the American Pie Council (it really exists!) has declared National Pie Day to be January 23rd. Now, I would guess it is because most bakeries experience slow sales in January and the APC thinks this might help boost traffic. Or maybe it is just that no one at APC got the memo about the 3/14 thing. Either way.

And all that said, in our earliest years, we’ve largely blown right past January 23rd with the expectation that we will celebrate properly on March 14th. And honestly, it has always felt a bit awkward to not mark the APC sanctioned day. But then, January is already my least favorite month and for the most part I’m already anxious, cold, and exhausted from working on being a better version of myself, so who even cares about adding in awkward?

Last year though, it occurred to me that we could celebrate the two separate events in completely different ways. Think of January 23rd as National Pie Day. Think of March 14th of World Pie Day. YES, PLEASE. #WORLDPIEDOMINATION.

And so last year, we did a little brainstorming of fun ways to celebrate National Pie Day that didn’t impede upon our plans for March’s Pi(e) Day…because neither are that special if you just continually do the same thing, right?

Which is just the very long way of saying that on Thursday, January 23rd, we will sell all of our three inch tart sized pies for $3. (See what we did there? Three inch tarts for $3? We are nothing, if not clever.) For the second year in a row, we plan to make tarts in all sorts of flavors and organize them by flavor in our wooden crates, making shopping easy and quick. No coupon code needed, no magical VIP card required. Just your desire to have fun and not lose your mind if someone in front of you swipes the last Dutch Apple tart. Last year, we sold just around 1,500 tarts and we’ve set a big goal for this year: 3,000. tarts (Besides clever, we are also competitively ambitious.)

So mark your calendars. Or ask Siri to remind you to attend the second annual event of what promises to be a long standing PJP tradition. It will be worth it.