We all wanted Piecorps to have a retail location, and great news: we can look forward to amazing pies come this June in Greenpoint! Piecorps needed to raise funds to buy a new oven and because of community donations they raised via Lucky Ant, they got it. Social media isn’t always evil.
I follow Piecorps on Facebook just to drool at all the amazing pies they come up with. Like Chili Pie with Cornbread Crust or Rhubarb Custard Pie. Good news is you don’t have to wait until the summer to enjoy their delicious pies. You can shop for pies online to be delivered to your front door or visit them on Saturdays at Hester Street Fair (LES) & Stone Barns Center (upstate) or on Sundays at New Amsterdam Market (South Street Seaport). All three Union Markets as well as Gourmet Guild carry their pies.
Greenpointers chatted with Pie Corps.
GP: How long has Pie Corps been around?
PC: We’ve been in business for one year… We started May 5th at the New Amsterdam Market.
GP: Who runs pie corps?
PC: Cheryl Perry and Felipa Lopez are co-founders, bakers and operators of the company.
GP: What are your backgrounds?
PC: I’m a chef of 20 years with a pretty vast knowledge of all things culinary. I’ve also been a freelance culinary instructor at the Natural Gourmet Institute for 16 years. Felipa is an acupuncturist, with offices in Bklyn., and NY. We were drawn to each other because we both LOVE food and cooking and beautiful ingredients and basically knew instantly that we wanted to have a food business together.
GP: How did you get into making pies?
PC: I’ve been an avid pie maker for most of my career, I spent one summer making a pie a day! Felipa learned to make fruit pie one summer while she had a house in Greenport LI – and grew up making savory empanadas with her grandmother – like bacalao, or picadillo… (both of which we make now at Pie Corps.)
GP: What are some of your favorite pies to make? To eat?
PC: I’d have to say for both of us, it’s the savory pies that are favorites to make and eat. We are both more drawn to cooking savory, and it’s what gives us the most excitement, in wondering how to for example turn my delicious fried chicken into a pie, which we did when we added it to a pie with buttermilk gravy and sauteed collard greens. A delicious summer meal baked up into a pie.
We do have lots of fun with sweet pies though, coming up with new seasonal flavors. Last year we were obsessed with the idea of making a grasshopper pie that didn’t have green jello and cool whip as the main ingredients. We came up with a pie that is SO light and SO minty, by using creme de menthe and fresh mint infused whipped cream. That was fun.
GP: Why did you decide to open a retail location?
PC: Pretty much across the board we try to listen to and give our customers what they want, so with everyone always asking when we were going to open a store, or where could they come to buy our pies, we decided that there was definitely a need / market for a savory and sweet pie shop – and we love Brooklyn SO much we know that’s where we wanted to be.
GP: Why did you use Lucky Ant?
PC: We went with Lucky Ant because we knew that they were a new business just like us, and that they could really appreciate where we were coming from in terms of needing funds to keep the momentum going and grow our business. They worked incredibly hard to help us with outreach.
GP: Were you worried you might not raise enough money?
PC: We had a good feeling about raising the money for our new oven… but you never know. I wouldn’t say we were worried, I’d say we felt optimistic and just really tweeted and FB’ed the heck out of our friends, and their friends and so on.
GP: When do you plan to open?
PC: We hope to open in the beginning of June and we are opening in Greenpoint on Driggs Avenue. With the opening of our new pie shop, we look forward to having a place our customers can come and sit and eat our pie and/or take pie home.