A Future Memory of PIG🐷

Happy Holidays,

In a move decidedly more Christmas ham than Thanksgiving pie, I have relocated to the country and started raising hogs.

It's not as far a cry from Pietisserie as it sounds, but it does mean that, sadly, I won't be part of your 2023 holiday celebrations. After a baker's dozen in years of operating Pietisserie, I still love pie. And yet, making new things involves hanging up this hat.

I have chapters now on the joys and sorrows of creativity and business, but the most important thing to say at this juncture is thank you! Thank you! I believed that miniscule seeds of inspiration are worth watering. Your part in the story of Pietisserie—as customers, collaborators and newfound friends—proved to me that they are.

When I started the company in 2010, I'd made only 25 pies in my entire life. Pietisserie grew into a company with a production capacity of 8,000 pies per day and a national reputation for ingenuity.

What is more Americana than pie? Through its iconography and my tenure as entrepreneur, I discovered something about aspiration: If the pursuit of happiness is our right, then our responsibility is the achievement of it by centering those undertakings which are rewarding in and of themselves—as Pietisserie was to me for so many years.

In one small business accelerator or another, I learned to speak the language of marketplace gaps (ie Did you know there is no pie to complement the proliferation of ice cream today's consumer prefers?). But the reality is that my fixation on pie, its presentation, and its position as a cultural commonplace was largely personal. To their chagrin, it was idiosyncrasy, not Survey Monkey, that bore Chocolate Cream Pretzel, shadowbox pie packaging, and high-concept seasonal shops.

To those of you who were customers between 2010 and 2013, my hankering for a slower life was obvious. I used to pull up to Lake Merrit or the farmers' market at Swan's, and pop my trunk to empty the disparate PVC parts of a mobile pie stand modeled after a country window with pies cooling on the sill. In less than 10 minutes, we'd all be whisked away to a time and place that was nostalgic despite the fact that, as modern city dwellers, neither I nor most of you were recalling this experience from personal history.

In many ways, the years precipitating my deep dive into pie have been similar to the last few. I was in New York City trying to be somebody. My strategy was being clever and my insurance plan was grit, because the road does wind. But what I was not prepared for is the toll crossings, where one pays in character and self-perception. Like many promising young women, I found that I was the product.

For so many reasons, I chose pie. None more important than that I hoped if I made a product that resonated I wouldn't have to be one. However, in the months and years after George Floyd's murder, I found my picture in every Whole Foods in northern California while purchase orders were cut and my recipes served as inspiration for their in-house pie program; I was the ideal face of an ESPN campaign called #ChampionBlackBusiness but had to chase down the promised cash award; and I dabbled in the sycophancy of the social investment space where high profile orgs use charismatic minority business leaders like mascots to garner foundation dollars.

Can we really be mad if Andre Benjamin can't find the words anymore, when what he said in 1996 still applies: By Thanksgiving 2022, I was floating face down in the mainstream.

Another artist Maurizio Cattelan, the Italian prankster, has said, “I don't know what art does for the people who look at it, but it saves the people who make it.” I am immensely grateful that, at one time, pie saved me.

The Ernestine Ranch is named for Ernie, my loving partner. In this rural corner of the northwestern coast, I will reconnect, give attention to interests I set aside, and see what comes.

Wishing you everything good this holiday season.

Love always,

Jaynelle

#afuturememoryofpie