How I Started a Pie Company Without a Clue About How to Start a Pie Company

Aug 18

Want to know what happens when you tell me no? A pie company happens, that’s what. Or at least, that’s how Dini’s Divine Homemade Pies came to be a small business.

It was winter 2021 and the pandemic was still raging. We were all wearing masks to work, keeping our distance at the grocery store, doing our best to evade the virus.

At the time, I was working as a chief attorney for Maryland Legal Aid, a job I’d started six months earlier after the courts closed and my solo law practice stalled. I was grateful for a steady job but also hamstrung by the low non-profit salary. After a few months of baking fruit pies for friends and acquaintances out of my home kitchen on the weekends, I was convinced of the potential for these pies to supplement my income.

I approached my town administrator about selling pies at our local farmers market. I talked to neighbors, dropped off samples, shared photos of the prettiest ones. None of this convinced the town. The administrator emailed that “the Farmers Market sells a variety of pies and given that we have a noncompete clause in our guidelines, you wouldn’t be able to sell your pies at the Farmers Market, as delicious as they look…Best of luck!”

Taste test with Rocklands' staff, February 2022.

So, I wrote to the owners of Rocklands Farm Winery in Poolesville, Maryland, a place I’d visited and loved. Maybe they would like to have a pie stand at the farm, I thought. They invited me to meet. I brought pies. They ate them. And a pie company was not-quite born…

First, I had to set up an LLC, buy liability insurance, take a test to become a certified food safety manager. I needed a Health Department license, a trader’s license from the circuit court, a Fats, Oils and Grease (FOG) disposal permit from WSSC. Most importantly, I needed a commercial kitchen. All of this had to be in place before I could sell pies at a venue like Rocklands.

It sounds daunting because it was, kind of like filing taxes, taking the bar exam, getting a tooth filled. But then you get through it and there’s a reprieve until the next year, the next test, the next cavity.

It would be another few months before the official Mother’s Day 2022 launch at Rockland’s Farm Winery. First, I had to learn my way around a commercial kitchen…

Next week, read about my first commercial kitchen experience, squeezing key limes, peeling apples, rolling dough, and so much more. In the meantime, here’s an episode of How I Built This in which Jim Koch, the founder of the Boston Beer Company, talks about “creating something out of nothing” and that “you need to be a storyteller to create a brand.” This podcast really spoke to me and I loved Guy Raz’s suggestion to offer customers a Spotify playlist. So here you go; this is what I’ve been baking to lately: