Pi(e) Day 2022
You might have heard by now that yesterday was National Pi(e) Day. To celebrate, we sold all of our baby and nine-inch dessert pies at a $3.14 discount. In the mid-afternoon, a local television reporter emailed to ask if he could interview me for the evening news because all of our pies were only $3.14. I responded and said they were discounted by $3.14 - they didn’t cost $3.14 or that sort of traffic jam to get to our stores would probably shut the city down. He didn’t answer me.
Here’s a breakdown of how it all went:
A large scale event in two stores is NO JOKE. We had a lot of prep work to do on Sunday and we started at 8 am on Nifong and worked until 3. And then we took the show over to West and worked from 3 until sunset. It wasn’t glamorous at all.
Also, Sunday was the spring forward time change. This country is divided on every single issue that I can think of except for the fact that time change is the devil’s work.
We also started exceptionally early Monday morning. It was the first day I had gone to West in the middle of the night. I low key worried it would be creepy, but it was fine. Did you know that the parking lot at The Shoppes at Stadium has trucks driving around cleaning it? I’m certain it will cost $8.2 million dollars on our yearly assessment, but the lot is cleaner than Nifong.
But then as the sun started to rise, I switched and went to Nifong. We weren’t sure what to expect in both stores, but wondered if Nifong wouldn’t be the busier of the two and this wasn’t my first pi(e) day rodeo.
Jason and Jeanne led the charge on an impressive West location baking schedule. I missed being with them when I opened the doors at Nifong.
We had lines at 10 am at both stores. And then both stores were just busy all day without any lull. WHEW.
We all did so well and made HUNDREDS of pies at both stores. Really our only issue was when our food broker delivered both the Nifong and West food deliveries to Nifong. And that’s no issue comparative to things I’ve dealt with before on busy days.
There was no crying, no complaining, no pie shortages, and no second guessing ourselves. We’ve either gotten better at this or our threshold for what stresses us out has improved.
We also were able to keep both stores open until 6 pm and that’s a first in PJP history.
It is hard to compare sales to previous years because this is our first year with two locations, but we more than doubled our 2021 totals. I remember thinking last year that we had made all the pies humanly possible…and here we are this year, 100% more pies. #WORLDPIEDOMINATION