Pie Is Love

Well, proving there is never a boring day at PJP, this evening Jeanne’s husband had to have emergency surgery for a blockage in his intestine. After a significantly long surgery, he is in the ICU at the VA hospital and we are all hopeful for the best over the next few days. His surgeon reported the actual procedure went well, but the recovery would be arduous. So please send all the good thoughts you can to both Jeanne and her husband Dale. They both have had a heck of a day. Goodness.

And until she called me at noon to tell me she had called 911, we were plugging right along at PJP. I realized with some alarm last week that we haven’t had a $5 Friday in our new storefront - the last was actually April 5, 2019. (If you are new here, when a Friday naturally falls on the fifth, we sell all baby pies for $5 each.) I sketched out a plan for what this week’s $5 Friday should look like and then started to stress about how the heck we are going to get all that done. And then Jeanne called and I felt lame for stressing about a fun pie event when all that was going on with Dale, so I decided to table all the pie worry to tomorrow. (Though, I’ll say that in 2019 we sold 1,099 baby pies that day and so I’ve set the goal at an attainable, yet impressive, 2,000 baby pies. Ahem.)

For the past week or so, our baby pie boxes have been out of stock from our regular vendor. And then out of stock at our Plan B vendor (whom we love, they just tend to be about $15 a box more expensive). So last week, I had to order from our Emergency Only vendor because their identical box of boxes is double the price (plus shipping) of our preferred vendor. I swear it can never be easy. I hereby adjust my goals of #worldpiedomination to solely include the justification and storage space to buy a semi truck of baby and nine inch pie boxes at a single time. I have a plan to go to St. Louis on Wednesday and pick up nine cases from Plan B vendor, but those are the last nine cases in existence at a price that doesn’t make my heart hurt. (Always in these situations, I want to know WHY the manufacturer is out of the box we need. Did their equipment break? Did they just not feel like it? Did they think they made enough for a hot second? These are answers I’ll never have, but I’ll always want for the backstory.). I would say we are prepared enough to not hand a $5 baby pie steaming hot into your hands, but next week may be dicey.

And then in the afternoon after the box debacle and the calling-the-ambulance drama, I had a Zoom meeting with MBA students on their project for the semester. I can’t say yet what we are working on because it is top secret, but it is super exciting indeed. I’m pretty certain I managed to seem pretty normal, despite all the things I just discussed above.

Oh, and early this morning, I posted a 20% off promo code for Jelly Jar pie shipments for next week for Valentine’s Day arrival. And then I was busy and distracted all day and happened to look before sitting down to write this and OH MY GOODNESS. Apparently everyone loves a promo code. I will say that I put a limit on the number of times the code could be redeemed and only a few spots are left. So, if you want to send someone special a sweet six pack of Jelly Jar pies for delivery no later than February 12th, then be sure to order and apply promo code PIEISLOVE at checkout.

I’m going to go watch some TikTok and try not to stew around about all the above mentioned stressful things. Thanks to everyone who takes a minute to send some good thoughts to Jeanne and Dale - they sure could use it and we sure appreciate it.