You Know It
On Saturday morning, Jeanne, my daughter, and I packed up a few hundred tarts and a fair amount of PJP decor and we headed west to the Williams-Sonoma store in Leawood, Kansas for our first ever pop-up shop. (Did you ever notice that like 15 years ago, no one talked about pop-up shops? And now everyone pops up…well, everywhere? We had no idea what to expect for Saturday afternoon, but we were excited to try out the concept and mark “do a pop-up” off the PJP bucket list.)
It likely won’t surprise you that we had THE BEST TIME EVER. Williams-Sonoma had set up an area for us immediately inside the front door of their beautiful space where we could sample and sell tarts all afternoon. Of course, we met countless numbers of new friends…all of who were so complimentary of their samples and excited to take tarts home. Even with that said, we couldn’t believe how many PJP fans came to see us. We had quite a few customers who enjoyed PJP in Columbia and then moved to the Kansas City area and stopped in to give us hugs and chat about the new PJP store and load up on tarts. And the best surprise was seeing our long-time employee Sydney, who spent a good chunk of the afternoon with us now that she lives in Kansas City.
We sold almost everything, but consistently faced the same comment: WHY DIDN’T YOU BRING BIG PIES? We had someone who brought a cooler because they had serious plans to take home coconut and chocolate cream pies. It never occurred to us that big pies would be in demand. We went with big hopes just selling some of the tarts…not to sell most and have a legion of people planning to make significant pie purchases. (If anything tends to hold us back, it is an underestimation of our popularity. Which is probably related to low self-esteem. Thanks for attending therapy today.)
Two other notes from our visit worth mentioning:
Williams-Sonoma asked us to return on a monthly basis. That certainly gives us something to consider, doesn’t it?
Almost every single person who purchased pie asked about the possibility of Thanksgiving pie pick up in the Kansas City area. Huh. That sort of request is flattering, of course, but also right up our alley because it is a complex proposition and that sort of thing falls right into our wheelhouse. Could we take pre-orders for Kansas City area customers and meet them at a designated location for pickup? Sure. Would it be an overwhelming prospect? Yes. Are we actively thinking about it? You know it.