Thanksgiving 2023 Recap
Well, here we are on the other side of our 10th Thanksgiving. And for all of my anxiety last week, I continually reminded myself that however it played out…I’d likely been through worse. (Though honestly, I feel like for my 10th Thanksgiving, I’ve earned a merit badge or some other tangible item of recognition.) For all of you that have emailed me, Facebooked me, and texted me to see if we survived and how it all went…here you go:
We did, in fact, survive. By the time it all shook out, we baked just over 3,500 pies between both stores. Even so, it was undeniably easier than any other previous Thanksgiving. Remember those days where we would stay at PJP 24/7 in the days preceeding the Wednesday pickup day? Me too and I don’t miss that. I don’t think there’s any one thing that changed to make it easier, but rather a culmination of a lot of knowledge that pushed us to the other side of managing the chaos.
For the most part, pie pick up in two locations was smooth sailing through calm seas and we had less customer confusion about pick up than last year. Overall, 98% of our visitors were happy. (Let’s not talk about the other 2%. Woof. I’m going to run for office on the platform that every single person in America has to work one year in retail because it would result in markedly less mean people at the holidays.)
We did not run out of ingredients and endured no madcap runs to Hyvee, Aldi’s, Walmart, or Sam’s (minus one quick visit for butter to tide us over until the delivery truck arrived). Do you remember that first Thanksgiving when we had to go to Hyvee and buy all their pumpkin and they said no? I do. And not repeating that level of pumpkin desperation is a crowning achievement in my professional life.
We also did not run out of pie tins, pie boxes, or bags. At either store. If you are new here, that sort of thing used to happen to us all the time.
Now, all that said, making just under 4,000 pies is no easy feat…even if you have the ingredients and the packaging materials. So let’s not for a hot second imply that I didn’t question all of my life choices at least five separate times last week.
Team PJP, as you might guess, was the MVP through it all. It takes a special group of people to look at a baking schedule that asks for thousands of pies and not be daunted by the day ahead.
One of our biggest goals for this year was to not have persistent lines out the store for pie pickup like we did last year. Trust me when I say that even in the most non-Thanksgiving month, like June, someone would remind me that they had to wait in long lines last year. We made some tweaks to how we handled pickup and never had a line at either store of more than 10 people. My favorite part of entrepreneurship is making us continually better at what we do.
Most people always wonder which pie we make the most of and it is always pumpkin. I’m going to submit myself to Guiness Book of World Records as the human who has make the most pumpkin pies from scratch. I would literally not flinch at a head-to-head pumpkin pie making challenge with any person on this earth. Bring it on.
I did cry once last week. I had made it a solid number of years with no tears, but this year I cried on Sunday and mainly it was because I was tired and because I had been home so little that I felt like our dog was disappointed in me. If you know, you know.
And if you are curious, I heard no less than four Team PJP members express today how happy they were that Thanksgiving - and all the stress we were under - was over until next year. Or Christmas. Either way.