Twice as nice: Be Happy Pie Co. opens second location in Evansville
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Be Happy Pie Company, a sweet and savory bakery, is twice as busy this spring with a second location on Evansville’s east side. The new store at 6225 E. Virginia St. opened on Jan. 23, also known as National Pie Day.
“It’s been very busy at the new location. Our patio is open, and we are looking forward to good weather. We are very grateful for the community’s support,” said owner Jenny Lamble.
Lamble’s team at the westside location at 2818 Mt. Vernon Ave. bakes for both shops and transports goods to the east side daily. This week, in honor of the upcoming solar eclipse, the bakery is featuring the Solar Eclipse Sunshine Pie, a 5” orange pie with a chocolate crescent moon, for $8. Lamble insisted a lot of hard work goes into creating these soft pastries.
“I always say baking is not for sissies because we’re schlepping 50-pound bags of flour. I’ve got some pretty good upper-body strength as a result. I mean, I’ve gained 30 pounds since we started in 2017, but I think it’s stress-induced,“ she said.
Lamble decided to expand Be Happy Pie Company beyond the west side because customers who frequent the original shop have asked for a second store for years.
“People would say, ‘I drove all the way from Newburgh. We really need you on the east side.’ We’ve been hearing that since we opened,” she said.
From school counselor to pie baker
Before she owned a bakery, Lamble was a school counselor in Posey County. She told Inside INdiana Business it was a school safety planning drill that prompted her to contemplate a career switch.
“We started doing active shooter training. And I was very scared and upset. I didn’t know if I could continue doing this for the rest of my career,” Lamble said.
As she began thinking about her next move, Lamble consulted a career counselor who zeroed in on her culinary aspirations.
“I was like, ‘I need help. What do I do?’ And he said, ‘What do you like to do?’ And I said, ‘I like to bake,’” Lamble said. “He said, ‘Every time you talk about baking, your whole face lights up.’”
Lamble eased into her new venture by baking pies for a friend and then taking her treats to farmers’ markets.
“People were like, ‘This is amazing. You should have a storefront,’” said Lamble. “We did that for a couple of years, and then I said, ‘You know what? I want to try this.’ So my husband [Rick] built me a kitchen in our basement because he got tired of me wrecking the kitchen every weekend.”
Lamble eventually quit her job and opened Be Happy Pie Company on the west side in 2017. Her best-selling sweet pie is cherry pie, and her best-selling savory pie is chicken pot pie. Everything is made from scratch.
“A lot of places say they bake from scratch, which is completely different. We are literally making everything here in store, so it’s a very labor-intensive process,” said Lamble. “But you can pronounce every ingredient. We try to use local fruit when we can, like strawberries, peaches and apples.”
The bakery’s challenges have included supply chain issues, fluctuating egg prices and freezer space, but Lamble said labor has not been a problem.
“We have been very thankful for our workforce. We have fabulous people,” she said.
Emily Eades started working for Lamble at the west-side shop while attending the University of Southern Indiana. She became the manager after receiving a bachelor’s degree in business administration and management and a master’s in project management. Eades is also Be Happy Pie Company’s marketing manager, relying on social media to attract customers.
“It’s a lot of work. Trying to make all the videos and edit them and make sure that they’re good. It’s just a lot, but it makes the business grow. So it’s fun,” Eades said. “It’s really the pictures that get people.”
The east-side shop
Lamble offers a rotating menu at the new east-side shop so she and her team can get used to serving customers at two stores. She’s also beginning to partner with food trucks.
“We’re paring down our menu just a bit … because we have everything from cookies, scones, danishes, sweet rolls, coffee cakes, brownies, cheesecakes. We even do a dog treat called Murphy Bites. We have a huge menu that we quickly realized we’re not going to be able to sustain at two locations for the time being,” Lamble said.
While Be Happy Pie Company on the west side has a grab-and-go style, the east-side location features beverages, extra space for seating and a patio.
“We’ve partnered with Minas Espresso. They are a coffee company out of southern Illinois, and they supply our ground coffee. We are brewing hot coffee. We also do cold brew, and then we’re doing sweet and unsweet tea. So that’s been a fun new offering as a complement to our desserts,” Lamble said.
Eades said the west-side shop is adjusting to the process of supplying an extra location.
“It’s put a lot more demand on us because we have to produce double with the same space and the same staff that we’ve got,” she said. “Like with ordering … it’s double the chicken for chicken pot pie, double the ground beef for taco pie.”
Josh Schmitt, manager of the east-side store, said keeping in touch with Lamble and Eades is crucial for customer satisfaction.
“If we have an order that’s misplaced … it would be a bit harder to fix that immediately. [We can’t] just walk to the back, make that pie, throw it in the oven and tell that customer it’s coming out soon. We have to make sure our communication with the west-side bakers is top-notch … what we have in stock, what we’re selling through the quickest,” he said.
Schmitt came to Be Happy Pie Company after a decade working in corporate retail for Macy’s, Bed, Bath and Beyond and Staples.
“It’s a bit different being at a local company because in a corporate atmosphere, pretty much anything I could do for the customer I could do,” said Schmitt. “We’ve got limits in terms of how many things we can bake each day,” he said.
Lamble said getting used to staffing a second location is a bit different for her, too.
“We hired seven people … so that’s been a huge learning curve for me because now that we have two stores, I can’t be overseeing everything,” she said.
“The trust and respect she has for me is amazing,” added Schmitt. “I can tell that this is her passion, and it’s something that I am equally passionate about, just helping her grow this business.”
Shipping and store expansion
In addition to two shops in Evansville, Be Happy Pie Company offers nationwide shipping for select 5” and 10” pies plus apparel such as t-shirts and hats.
“Since 2017, we’ve seen an increase in sales every month and every year. Last year, we saw a little bit of a plateau,” said Lamble. “That’s why we implemented nationwide shipping last April to have another revenue stream.”
Lamble said she’s working on expanding shipping offerings and possibly shop locations.
“We are looking to potentially franchise. We’re not ruling out the idea of some more company stores,” she said. “We’re kicking that idea around so we could hopefully maybe expand a couple of hours away.”
However, as the bakery grows, Eades and many of her customers plan to stay loyal to the west-side original.
“We’ve had some of our customers go to the east side to check [out the new shop], but then we’ve had some saying, ‘Please don’t leave us.’ … There’s just something so unique about the west-side store because Rick and Jenny took a garage and turned this place into a beautiful bakery, and it’s so homey. There’s just something about this place that you’ll never get somewhere else,” she said.