Pi(e) Day 2021
You might have heard by now that this Sunday was National Pi(e) Day. To celebrate, we sold all of our baby and nine-inch dessert pies at a $3.14 discount. I basically drove myself crazy last week second guessing myself on the decision to celebrate on Saturday the 13th (because we are normally closed on Sundays). I absolutely HATED to not celebrate on the actual day, but really couldn’t stomach the thought of asking Team PJP to work Sunday and thereby be completely out of our regular routine. Overthinker, Party of One. Turns out, it was all just fine.
Here is a breakdown of how it all went:
Our earliest customers arrived before 10 am, enduring a long wait on a brisk and gloomy March morning. Nothing makes Team PJP move faster than a line accumulating down the sidewalk to Hyvee.
Last year, we had a line to check out all day in the store…reaching all the way to our back door at several points. This year, our COVID precautions limited our in-store guest count to four people. And honestly, it made for a better experience. We felt less stress while baking and customers were more relaxed to browse the selections.
Though, can you imagine a pandemic Pi(e) Day during our Buttonwood location? We would probably be allowed one or two shoppers at most, leaving an epic line outside to the Starbucks…which already hosts epic drive thru lines, pandemic or not.
We were infinitely better staffed and better prepared than any other year. We had hundreds of pies ready by 10 am and most of the bakers were headed home by noon. WHAT? Long gone are the days of 2 am start times and crying.
Without question, we achieved more in quantity production than in any previous year and a marked level in the increase of flavor options than in any previous year. I know a lot of people may not have found their tried and true favorites on the shelf, but nonetheless were excited to try something new, especially at a discounted price. We did a significant amount of White Chocolate Raspberry and it was a crowd favorite all afternoon.
We did have quite a few new visitors to PJP. In our earliest days, that would make me cringe because we would be a hot mess and I would reassure the new visitors that we are normal every day of the year BUT Thanksgiving and Pi(e) Day. But now, we’ve evolved enough and we looked busy, but well prepared. I would have bet against myself a few years ago if you told me busy, but prepared was in our future.
We didn’t even run out of any supplies or groceries. CHECK AND MATE.
Team PJP was a delight, as always. We worked hard, but worked well together. Most stayed after shifts, started shifts early, and even worked unscheduled shifts to get us to our goal.
It was a joy to send people home Saturday at their regularly schedule shift end time, rather than lure them into staying an extra three or four hours to keep baking by offering up a mass order of El Maguey tacos. In milestones of entrepreneurial growth, I’ll remember this one.
And when you look at all the numbers, we outpaced last year by 13%. I remember thinking last year that we had made all the pies humanly possible…and here we are this year, 13% more pies. #WORLDPIEDOMINATION
