Dog Stocking Hustle Earns Husky Payoff

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

Greetings and hello. This is your host, your daily commentator, Chris Gillibough. I would like to wish you a happy Thanksgiving. And this greeting goes out to everyone, not just my fellow Americans. This is one of the only holidays that I look forward to and appreciate every year.

Some holidays, to be honest, I am quite happy when they come and go, but this one is special, at least to me. And like I always say, even if your country doesn't celebrate this holiday, you can still be grateful, first of all, and you can still eat pie. Hmm. In true fashion, today's story features a national pie championship judge who crosses the sidelines to become a baker herself. Actually, she was a baker first and then became a judge, but we'll get to that.

Also a side note, how can I become a national pie championship judge? I am no baker, but I have eaten a lot of pie in my life. So I'd like to think that my opinion matters. More to the point of our story, this full-time journalist, part-time baker, is now transitioning to focus more on workshops. She wants to empower other bakers and spread the love of sugar, butter, and flour.

I can't wait to bring you this delicious story. So stay tuned. [Music]

The about page for Katherine Gewertz begins as follows. I admit it, I'm thoroughly in love with pie. When I'm making the morning coffee, I'm counting the hours until I can get my hands back into dough.

When I'm supposed to be working, I'm daydreaming about that delirious look on the face of someone who took their first bite of curvy mama pie. Katherine earns her living as a journalist, but spends a lot of her off-the-clock hours finding excuses to bake, as if anyone needs an excuse. A long-time baker, for many years Katherine was intimidated by pies. There was just so much that could go wrong. Even though beauty is in the pie of the beholder, you could still do something as simple as overworking the dough and end up with an absolute disaster.

It wasn't until her 11-year-old daughter challenged her that something changed. Her daughter had been turning out delicious pies at her dad's house, and Katherine decided she needed to raise her game. She began curvy mama's pies just as a block, chronicling an apprenticeship she did at Bubbies, a master pie baker's in New York City. By the way, make sure you say that phrase carefully, a master pie baker's. There was just one problem.

You could read nice words and stories about pies, and Katherine wrote a lot of them, but research shows that pies are best appreciated as a more sensory experience. When she got back to the newsroom where she worked as a journalist, her colleagues asked, "How can I get some of this goodness?" She started offering pies for sale, especially around Thanksgiving. She settled on a price of $24 per pie and put up a list on her blog for her friends and family to order from. That was when she learned a big lesson. Instead of giving people an option of four different flavors, like any sane person would do, she let people order whatever they wanted.

When you're gonna bake at scale, you can't let everyone do that. If you have to turn out 15 pies, you should offer a limited selection so that you can bake in larger batches. After her elbows and so many different kinds of fillings was an eye-opening moment for Katherine. There she was on her first pie-full Thanksgiving in the middle of a meltdown, putting together one chocolate cream, one pecan, one apple, and so on. But still, somehow she managed and trimmed the last of her pies with grim determination.

When the next holiday season rolled around, she cut down her offerings to four flavors, pecan, also known as pecan, sweet potato, pumpkin, and apple, essentially the classics. She also learned how to make dough in advance, which was a huge relief. At Bubby's, she had seen them pre-make dough that could be whipped up into delicious pies at the drop of a hat. She mixed, weighed, and rolled out disc after disc of pie dough, shaped them, put them in pans, plated, crimped, and stacked them by the dozen in the freezer. Looking at her beautiful frozen pie crust all neatly piled up, she realized, "Now that's how you bake at scale." For the next several years, Katherine continued her pie hustle, peaking at an annual record of 122 pies in 2014.

Not surprisingly, Thanksgiving remained the busiest season, comprising up to 50% of her yearly orders. She says that she doesn't like to get above 40 to 50 pies during that season. It's the level she stays at to avoid insanity on top of a demanding full-time journalism job. And she turns down business each year. Katherine also began teaching pie workshops, where aspiring bakers could learn from her hard-earned skills.

She traveled the country, meeting pie makers near and far. And yes, she even became a judge at the Iowa State Fair. After recently relocating to the Los Angeles area, Katherine is now taking a break while she looks for a space to teach more workshops. It's been a sweet and fulfilling adventure, no matter which way you slice it. [Music]

So we discovered Katherine while we were looking for a pie of the month club to feature.

And I discovered that there are actually many of them. I was surprised at how many different pie of the month clubs there are. I guess my biggest surprise was why have I not subscribed to any of them, so obviously I will correct that problem. But there are pies of the month that you can have shipped to you. There are pies of the month in lots of different cities.

Some people even do international shipping, which I think is brave. I'm not quite sure how that works, but presumably they've got it figured out. So just as there is a of the month club for all kinds of stuff, there is more than one for pies. Now, last but not least, before we wrap up for the day, well, first of all, the show notes. Today's show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/692.

You can read more about Kirby Mama. She's actually got some really great stories on her blog. But before we wrap up, I do want to say I am thankful for you. I know it may seem like a kind of a cliche or like everybody's saying that they're thankful today, but I honestly am thankful for you just about every day. You are what makes all this possible.

And I really do feel honored and grateful to make this show every day. I really do believe the best is yet to come. And that's also because of you, the listeners, our community. So you matter, thank you. And as we close it out, here are a few puns that were not used in today's episode.

Feel free to use these at your Thanksgiving table or wherever you are. Pie in the sky, live and let pie. You are the apple of my pie. In the twinkling of a pie, the pie has been cast and my favorite, get rich or pie trying. Thanks again, I'll be back tomorrow.

This is Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School.