Apples are good. Bacon is bacon. Put them together in a pie, Mike Busley will tell you, and you have …
Well, you have something that’s not on the menu anymore at Grand Traverse Pie Co.
“I was excited,” he said, “but it didn’t set any records, let’s just say.”
Across the decades, Busley concedes, Grand Traverse Pie has made mistakes. It has also made quiche, sandwiches and a Hudson’s Maurice salad.
Mostly, however, it has made pies. Excellent pies. Thousands upon countless thousands of pies.
As of July 19, it has been making pies in Michigan for 30 years. That’s a big number, and it set me to wondering:
Across that span, what have founders Mike and Denise Busley learned?
Here’s something. At the National Cherry Festival in Traverse City one year, they experimented with pie smoothies and sold them as quickly as they could churn them out. So they installed the machinery in their shops − and no one cared.
In that setting, amid comfortable booths and comforting smells, “people would rather eat the pie than drink it,” Mike said.
They had forgotten one of the things that brought them into the pie business in the first place, along with a yearning to leave their careers in San Diego and come home to Michigan to raise their kids.
“You feel something with pie,” Denise said.
Yes. A good sandwich is lunch. A good pie is a connection, to times and places and people.
And it’s oh, so scrumptious.
The Oven Mitten State
Michigan is a pie state. We grow our own fruit, in abundance − apples, cherries, blueberries, raspberries, peaches. We even grow sugar beets.
We celebrate places like Sister Pie, on something of a hiatus in Detroit’s West Village, and support another successful homegrown chain in the Achatz Homemade Pie Co.
The Busleys opened their first shop in Traverse City with not much more than hope and an oven. Today, they have 11 restaurants and a robust mail order operation, and you can find their pies in grocery stores.
I am, for the record, a fan of pie. I am also a fan of the Busleys, who are so generous by nature that they opened a shop in downtown Traverse City, five blocks from their flagship, whose only purposes are to keep people working and funnel profits to charity.
Mike is 70, two years older than Denise. They’ve been married 45 years. He says their first day of business is a blur, back in 1996, “but I remember it with clarity,” she said.
They’d had a “Coming soon” sign in the window for so long she worried that passersby had stopped believing it. As they opened the doors, she wondered whether they’d sell anything at all.
In short order, they sold out.
They closed for a few hours, baked more pies, and opened again.
Counsel from the kitchen
Denise has a philosophy that applies to just about anything worthwhile.
“Every day,” she said, “you treat your marriage and your business like it’s special.”
Mike’s approach includes making sure he knows when he’s ignorant. They brought in a partner to fill some gaps years ago – hello, Tim Rice – and with their kids now full-fledged adults, the Busleys have hired a consultant to steer them through succession planning.
“Somebody has to be in charge,” Mike said, “but I’m learning right along with everyone else.”
Also in the TED talk, if he was giving one: “You constantly have to navigate.”
That means pivoting sometimes, he said, but you have to pick a North Star. For Grand Traverse Pie, the guiding light is classic comfort food with an Up North feel, welcoming enough that the Plymouth shop hosts regular meetings of a knitting club.
The knitters never had a chance to try Nutella pie, blueberry lavender or Pop Rocks. Those never escaped the test kitchen, and OK, it’s a wonder Pop Rock pie even made it to the mixing bowl.
Customers’ three favorites, in order, are apple, cherry and chocolate.
The cherry has a history Denise can’t explain.
Only two years after her dad, Ed Redmond, swept the floors at the grand opening, he died at 64. He couldn’t eat anything else by then, she said, but somehow he would rally for cherry pie.
They’ve seen that often enough since, she said − an appetite, or at least a response − that they donate cherry pies to hospice centers.
Denise suggests there’s something emotional about a pie, with the allure and aroma that can fill a room.
Mike has watched it happen, but trying to be objective, he said maybe the same thing would happen with a cupcake.
Me, I’m not going to wait. I’ll take my pie now.
Neal Rubin likes berry pies best, but he’s willing to settle for some of the others − or actually, all of them. Reach him at NARubin@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Owners of Grand Traverse Pie Co. share lessons from 30 years in business
Reporting by Neal Rubin, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Neal Rubin, Detroit Free Press | USA TODAY Network
