Pie n the Sky

Pete’s Pies (Key Lime Pies to be exact) is on vacation while getting its act together with the Calvert County Health Department as one person, who obviously didn't get a sample, felt the need as a responsible (sic) citizen, to accomplish. The citizen was right on the mark because in Maryland, unlike the Commonwealth of Virginia, you cannot bake food products in your home kitchen for commercial distribution. I am thankful that this person informed on me, during the proposed Town Hall debate, to the Health Department, since, after receiving a certified letter from the agency, I got to speak with one of its very attentive staff members. Since then, I also got to meet an ancillary victim of this incident-Kim of Kim’s Key Lime Pies in Solomons Island, Maryland.

As previously stated, I am doing what I should have done in the beginning, learning the applicable rules, mustering the funding, so when approval to begin anew “Pete’s Pies” is given, I can hit the ground running.

With all that has happened in the past two months, it never dawned on me , contrary to Health Department information, that Kim was not the one who reported my transgression. I visited Kim last Sunday and she was stunned that someone had used her name to complain about Pete’s Pies . A very engaging entrepreneur, Kim regaled me with the histrionics of her career and her store’s operation, which was both impressive and informative.

For obvious reasons, I think my Key Lime Pie is the absolute best, but all should know that Kim’s is a definite contender. After all, that is how it all got started.

On a balmy early summer evening on the porch of the Westlawn Inn, there was a discussion about Key Lime Pies and who could make the best one. Great topic for a small town. I had an old "family” recipe and held an informal tasting of my pie on the porch of the Westlawn Inn to celebrate former Mayor Mark Frazer’s appointment by Governor O’Malley to the state's higher education board. Indeed the pie was a contender and “poof” it was gone. Similar ‘free’ distributions of the pies went to friends, neighbors, relatives, commercial establishments, restaurants, and judicial officials as far away as Annapolis, and, not to my surprise, the responses were all very positive. Samples were also given to Town Hall staff in an effort to get permission to sell the pies at this summer’s Farmer’s Market. The response to the two pies that were left was very positive, but I abandoned the marketing effort in light of the fact that I could not honestly attest to a requirement that the ingredients were locally grown, a criteria for any submission to the Farmer's Market. I probably could have satisfied the process by buying eggs from a local farmer, but it seemed like such a costly effort when I can walk six blocks to Roland’s to get the same. Catch 22, support a local establishment or……you get the picture.

Kim and I are in complete agreement that Key Lime pies are not cheap to make both in terms of product costs and also preparation time, so to market the same would have to be at a price of at least $3.50 a slice, with a minimum of eight slices to a pie, you may net a decent hourly rate with multiple pies in the oven. So my investment in this new venture, with market testing and consumer sampling of this ‘contender’, was very substantial.
I am moving forward with “Pete’s Pies” and hope to be fully licensed over the winter so Kim and I can have a ‘bake off” in the spring of 09. She would actually like to have a ‘throw down” with Bobby Flay, but I am initially from New York, so ……………, what do they say about.....seconds?

There is a multi faceted moral of this recital: I was able to dust off an old “family” recipe, which has been uniformly well received and experience ideally what small towns are all about. ‘Two steps forward, one step back” is a process that I am becoming used to as well. I am learning what entrepreneurism is all about. Even with this “one step back” experience, I got to meet Kim, who is making a difference! Last but not least, small minded people, who operate in the shadows of cowardice, deception, using someone else's identity and who engage in mean-spiritedness really do not know what they are doing, and like the donkey in the "Wells Are All Covered Up", it may ultimately come back to bite you!

I make a very good Key Lime pie!

This is your Town. This is your Neighborhood. This is North Beach.