Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jannie Teitelbaum. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Jannie, thanks for joining us today. Do you have any advice regarding quality control and maintaining quality as your brand grows?

I started as a one-person show in my kitchen. I was personally making every pie filling and every batch of dough by myself. I was in control of all the ingredients and how each pie was prepared. As I grew I had to “let go” and have others do some cooking and pie assembly. It was hard at first but as long as I kept tasting and overseeing the final product, it got easier to let others help with the process. When the business was growing faster than I could keep up with, I had to continue that same process. I always made sure I tasted each batch of filling to keep the consistency of what I wanted my product taste to be. Now that I have my own store and have just started wholesaling to stores, I have to make sure that quality continues. I have employees that care and take pride in our products.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’ve had other businesses before but had never been involved with food. I actually started my business to keep busy and be semi-retired. Now I work about 70 hours a week. I started making chicken pot pies and now have a variety of pies that we offer. I had people telling me that it’s hard to figure out what to make for dinner. I was on a mission to develop a chicken pot pie recipe that was special. I worked very hard on the taste of the crust and the consistency of the filling. The pies go from freezer-oven-table. What sets us apart is the quality of the food. When you taste one of our pies you know they have good ingredients. We also don’t use preservatives. I’m very proud of our pies. We have people thanking us for making them. It’s real comfort food.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

I started selling the pies to friends and women in a networking group. Then I started selling at a local farmers market every Saturday morning. Some customers started coming back each week and we began to have a following. At this point we had a variety of pies based on what people were asking for. Customers could tell we paid attention to detail and quality. We had great customer service and cared what people thought of our pies. We were always smiling and built relationships with our customers. Eventually when our store opened we already had a following. We also went on local tv and started a presence on social media.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

We feel it’s important to make sure each customer has a good experience. When someone comes in the store they’re treated the same as everyone else. A lot of our business comes from word-of-mouth. We engage with people not only in the store but on-line. We’ve found it’s important to be on social media and have targeted regions and age groups. It brings people into the store and has helped to increase our e-commerce business. Because of this we get a lot of referrals and shares on social media. Our biggest growth spurts have been when we’ve had television and radio coverage.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.greatlakespotpies.com
• Instagram: @greatlakespotpies
• Facebook: @greatlakespotpies