Interview with Scott
What was the biggest challenge in the first year you opened Proud Pie?
Cash flow. This is the single largest challenge of most startup businesses that are self funded from the beginning. You never really know how much money it takes to get your dream up and running. We tightened our belts and weathered through the storm and now we are here.
What was the biggest lesson you learned when starting Proud Pie?
Mail out ads, ads in magazines, ads in any print are not effective anymore for small businesses in a social media world. Social media ads properly done, create the biggest bang for your return. I’m not talking about social media posts. I’m talking about taking those posts and turning them into trackable measurable ads and revenue.
What’s one piece of advice you would give to a young baker wanting to open a store front?
Go forth and work for as many great places as you can. Take in every detail of operating that business. Become a manager at businesses so you get to see what running a company is like while spending someone else’s money. Spend years spending someone else’s money and get great at it and watching costs and profits and then open your own place and spend your own money. Don’t make mistakes with your own money.
I know this is like picking a favorite child, but which pie flavor is your favorite from the specialty menu and regular menu? Which pie is your best seller? The worst?
Regular menu favorite is Miss Daisy’s Fudge. That was the first recipe I ever baked when I was 8 years old and started my love for pie and cooking. It’s not just nostalgia that makes it my favorite though, I genuinely love the fudgy consistency.
Specialty menu favorite is Strawberry Pop Tart pie. I ate so many strawberry pop tarts when I was young. This pie tastes exactly like the pop tart but adds in real ingredients and butter fat and it’s divine. Most of my recipes are creations based on food/desserts I’ve come across throughout my life; I just felt like I could make a Pop Tart better being a pie.
Best seller to date is State Fair Caramel Apple but apple pie is the best seller in all the pie shops in America. Worst seller is a toss-up between the Apple Butter Custard or the Funky Monkey(banana bread custard recipe). Both were specialty pies we liked, but both fell short in sales.
What’s some of your “worst” pie ideas, any of them pop back up in your mind and you give it a second chance?
The Apple Butter Custard or the Funky Monkey(banana bread custard recipe). They just didn’t have enough of something. They fell short on sales and everyone who tasted them was like “Meh”. Since we couldn’t figure out what was wrong with the recipe, we probably will not see them back.
What is the best pie you have ever had that wasn’t your own?
When I was in grade school in Brentwood Tennessee, we had a Dietician named Mrs. Reed. She was an angry Australian woman who possibly hated children, but man could she cook. Her Fudge Pie was literally the best thing I had ever put in my mouth. It started me searching for a fudge pie recipe. I found a recipe in a little recipe book from Miss Daisy’s Tearoom in Carters Court, Tennessee. That was the first thing I ever tried to cook. The first pie came out horrible, but the second one was delicious and was pretty close to Mrs. Reed’s recipe.
What is the most memorable meal you have ever had? Who made it?
There was a tiny French bistro in Red Hook New York about 30 minutes from the Culinary Institutes campus. My friends and I made the drive for a Birthday celebration for a college friend. We had such a great time there. The food was on another level. I had a veal chop in a mushroom reduction sauce with dauphinoise potatoes and a fantastic Cabernet. I don’t remember the chef/owner’s name, but it was the most memorable meal. I’m not sure if it was because we were close to graduating and I loved all those guys so much, but it’s my fondest meal memory.
How did you get started in the food/hospitality industry?
Cooking is the perfect challenge for me. It’s the perfect ratio of artistic/creative to technical. Customer service is exactly the same type of ratio. Everyone looks at me funny when I talk about the art and creativity of customer service, but it truly takes creativity to be a great customer service practitioner. I love both cooking and taking care of people.
Why pie? Why not any other sort of pastry or dessert place?
Pie has been my hobby and love since I was 8 years old. I know more about pie than any other dessert. I have collected and simplified so many pie recipes it just seemed like a natural fit for opening my own shop.
Who is your culinary inspiration?
I have so many great chefs that I have known over the years. There were so many great chefs on TV when I was growing up that got me interested in cooking. If I had to name my favorite it would be the late Vincent Fatigati. Vince was a chef instructor at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York and my mentor. Vince was the youngest Certified Master Chef ever. He was tough but kind and really knew how to teach. Vince suffered from clinical depression and ended up taking his own life in 1992.
His memory reminds me to be kind to everyone, cause you have no idea what battles they are going through in their life.
How do you decide which specialty pies go into rotation and where do you get inspiration for your weekly pies from?
The specialty pie selection is mostly depending on whether we anticipate a slower week and have a new recipe complete and “on deck” or whether it will be a busier week so we can re-play an old specialty recipe.
Our advertising campaign is based on FOMO or fear of missing out, which is why we run pies of the week vs pies of the month. Better chance of getting folks in to see us multiple times a month and people get bored looking at the same pictures on their feed.
So, if we anticipate a slower week, we pull out a new recipe on deck that no one has seen before. If we anticipate a busy week, we will run a best seller again. We have 5 years of sales information that drives our anticipated weekly sales. I know it’s boring, but I try to be as disciplined in my promotional campaigns as I can.
What is your next big creation you are devoting your efforts to?
So many ideas but Boston Cream Pie is something we get a bunch of requests for. Boston cream pie is actually a cake so it’s not something we do. I would like to figure out how to make a pie rendition of it. Boston Cream Pie Pie.
What pie of the week have you made that you were most surprised by its success?
King Cake Pie. We had people waiting in the lobby for the new batches to be cooled and iced. We would tell them it was ready and they would line up to purchase and we would sell out again in minutes. King Cake Pie time is crazy!
Do you have plans to expand your business into other markets? Do you still have the Proud Pie Food Truck?
Our dream is to build a larger kitchen and then open multiple Proud Pies in Houston. We have a space picked out in Sugarland for the bakeshop and another shop attached. Our third space would be in the Memorial City area, fourth probably Cypress or Woodlands and fifth, I like Rice Village. The Proud Pie truck has been sold.
When you started making pies, what was the hardest thing for you to master?
Not overworking the dough. Pie crust needs sleepy happy dopey gluten, so you can’t overwork it. Grumpy gluten is for bread. The best bread is grumpy gluten bread.
How do you keep your meringues from weeping?
We don’t do a lot of meringue pies at Proud Pie because all natural meringues shrink in the refrigerator and we refrigerate our pies because we don’t use additives and preservatives and we use a boatload of real butter in each recipe. We all love meringue though and you can order them as specialty pies if you give us enough time.
A Swiss meringue is where you bring the egg whites and sugar to 120 degrees in a double boiler before you whip it to peaks. This meringue method binds the egg protein better so it won’t weep. The other things we do are use extremely fresh eggs and a touch of cream of tartar.
Vinegar in the crust or not?
We do not use it. I never have but I know pie bakers that swear by it. Our crust recipe at the shop takes the creaming stage to mealy so our crust is not really flaky. Vinegar helps the water in the butter to not bind to the gluten strands therefore producing a flakier crust. Since our crust is meant to be more like shortbread than flaky we don’t really need vinegar.
How much butter, sugar, and flour do you go through in a week? How many pounds of butter do you use per year?
Butter: 400 pounds (slow week) 650 pounds (medium week).
Sugar: 250 pounds (slow week) 350 pounds (medium week) this is just for cane sugar.
Flour: 300 pounds (slow week) 450 pounds (medium week).
In 2019, we used about 24,500 pounds of butter.
Have you ever thought of having classes on how to make pies?
I have taught pie dough classes at Miller Career Center. I might have time to teach when I retire.
What are common pie baking mistakes most people make at home?
Using store bought crusts. Making your own pie crust is so much fun. It really is.
I know you’ve answered this before but why can’t you create sugar free pies or gluten free pies?
The easy answer is, we don’t have enough space in our kitchen. When we expand to a larger kitchen we will add both of those offerings. The more correct answer is we are just not passionate about baking sugar free, gluten free, dairy free or vegan. When you ask someone to do something they are not passionate about, the end result is always crappy. I really don’t want to bake crappy pies.
When we expand I will find a true leader and culinarian that LOVES baking in those mediums and will excel in it to take over that side of the kitchen.
We saw many restaurants close during the pandemic. What business decisions did you make or change to keep Proud Pie open? How has Covid affected your business?
When the pandemic got serious, my first concern was keeping my staff healthy and safe, so we masked up and moved service outdoors and went to an online pre order system with a walk up order station also. It was rough at first because we stayed busy. Our customers were totally stressed out with covid and I think overall that turned to stress eating. We did about the same numbers throughout covid this year as we did last year without covid. We were blessed in the fact that we have stayed busy. I have not had to lay off a single employee or take a single dollar of covid relief funds and we are still able to keep our same donation budget as 2019 to our charity partners. Our customers have taken care of my little pie shop during this pandemic and I am so thankful.
Do you ever have a bad day? What’s that like for you? Do you use pie to cope with the bad days, or does something else work better?
I think we all have bad days. I’m not a perfectionist, but I do get really disappointed in myself sometimes because I got lazy and didn’t do what needed to be done when it needed to be done. I’ve become a better judge of how complete my communication is and where it’s lacking. If something goes wrong at work I try and look at how my communication affected it. I think if I eat to relieve stress it’s probably Sushi Neato. Katy Special roll with a side of edamame.
What is your least favorite part of your job?
Paperwork. Hate it.
What do you see in each staff member you hire? They’re always happy to see customers.
I’m more concerned with someone’s smile and heart than their previous training. We can train the technical stuff of being a Pierista. You can’t train nice into people. I’m really lucky in the fact that my core staff has an infectious desire to serve. I have had a few folks I’ve hired that may not have been the perfect candidate, but once they got into the shop and connected with my staff, they turned into great servers.
Does every employee that works there get a chance to create a pie flavor?
We don’t turn down suggestions from anyone.
If you could bake a pie for any celebrity, who would it be, and what flavor of pie would you bake?
I’m really not sure about this one. I had a dream once that Justin Timberlake and JJ Watt broke into Proud Pie in the middle of the night and I found them eating a whole Michigan State Cherry pie in the kitchen at the shop. That was a funny and good dream so let’s go with that.
Do you regret jumping on the LSU bandwagon?
Not for one stinkin minute Chris, not for one stinkin minute! Geaux Tigahs!
Would you ever consider making savory pies like chicken pot pie?
I love making chicken pot pies and other savory pies but that would be a different business model. Proud Pie has been very successful so far in it’s short life. We would rather focus on sweet pies and do them the best way we can.
Are your recipes old family recipes or new ones you’ve come up with on your own?
Mostly mine, discovered at different times in my life. I have stolen my key lime recipe and pecan pie recipes from chef friends.
Do you have the ability to ship pies? Is that something you are working on?
We have looked into shipping, but the overnight charges makes it a hard sell for most people.
Where did you get your heart for charity?
I love building relationships. That is the best part of being a small business owner. Investing in my community brings me more pleasure than running a profitable business. The more profitable my business is, the more I can give my time to others and charitable causes.
Eventually, I would like Proud Pie to create its own charity assisting special needs teens and young adults. My wife and I plan that in the far future, our retirement will be spent running our charity and Proud Pie would continue on with the day to day handled by our partners.
Our previous interviewee, Christos, would like to ask when you two can combine efforts and create the greatest baklava pie ever?
Uhhh…Today???
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