We recently connected with Lauren Bolden and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Lauren thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s the kindest thing anyone has ever done for you?

By the end of January 2020, I had approached multiple banks and individual financiers regarding a loan. I needed the money to open a second location for Pie Bar. This was the plan since 2018 when I built out a separate, larger kitchen away from my Woodstock shop. The plan was to have multiple shops within a certain area and all of our pies would be baked in our centralized kitchen.

After being repeatedly turned down, I decided that moving forward with the second shop was still in the best interest of growth for Pie Bar, so I signed a lease. We would take over the location in May 2020. I convinced myself that I would secure a loan before construction was slated to start.

It was a gray and wet day in January the first time I saw the building. It is located at the end of Powder Springs Street in Marietta, Georgia. It was home to a tattoo parlor that was moving to a larger building. The 800 sq ft shop would make a perfect place to serve folks visiting The Marietta Square a slice of pie and a cup of coffee. With its historic exposed brick and giant picture windows, I could see Pie Bar’s future.

Throughout the months of February and early March, there were a few rumbles of sickness and businesses starting to close, but I pressed on nonetheless, continuing to meet with loan officers in hopes of securing funding for the upcoming construction of our new space.

By mid-March, businesses were closing and stay-at-home orders were going into effect. It became clear why banks were turning down my loan requests. They knew the world was changing.

Pie Bar quickly adjusted our business model, turning to “to-go” and “curbside” savory pies only. People would pre-order savory pies like our Rosemary Chicken Pot Pie or a Feta & Spinach Quiche, swing by for pick-up, and we would run the order out to their vehicle. More than once I loaded a bag of savory pies into a customer’s car, making eye contact with them over our masks, and began to silently cry. I knew they were stocking up on dinner pies to keep Pie Bar in business, because how many pot pies could one person eat?

Pie Bar limped along like that through the spring months, serving guests from afar, all the while trying to figure out how we were going to manage the costs associated with construction at our new location. Then one day, a man walked into Pie Bar and changed my life.

Through the masks and the plexiglass he asked me, “Are you Lauren?” I told him I was. He asked to speak with me in private. I turned over the register to a team member and stepped aside with the man. He told me that through some folks around town he knew I was looking for a loan for Pie Bar’s second shop, and that he found himself in a position to be able to loan me the money.

I was shocked, confused, and frankly a little concerned. I didn’t know who this man was, and suddenly he was offering to loan me thousands of dollars. I had already come to terms with the risky idea of using credit cards and finding ways to cut costs as much as possible, and now someone was telling me that they would loan me the money.

Over the next several weeks I worked with this man, going through Pie Bar’s books, business plans, and the lease I had already signed. We involved lawyers and business advisors, to ensure that everything was above board.

Standing in the empty tattoo parlor before it became my pie shop, I looked at the man and asked him one question. “Why are you doing this?” His answer was more than I could have ever imagined, “because I was fortunate enough to have the means to do it, and I know you will do the same for someone else one day.”

In May 2020, Pie Bar officially took over the lease of 60 Powder Springs Street in Marietta, Georgia. Through careful planning, safety protocols, budgeting, and what I can only believe to be divine intervention, we were able to begin construction on our new pie shop.

August 12, 2020, Pie Bar Marietta quietly opened. Since then we have worked to engrain ourselves in the Marietta community in addition to ensuring that we make all loan repayments on time.

Four banks and multiple private lenders couldn’t have done for me what that man did. Yes, the money was important. It allowed me to have less stress as we built out the space. It allowed us to purchase equipment and plan for our future. But really, what he gave me was a renewed sense of purpose. A reminder that what we do impacts others, and as an owner of a small business, I have the opportunity to do that as well. I look forward to the day when I too can be a part of someone else’s story in the way that this man was for me.

Lauren , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Pie Bar is a retail pie bakery with locations in Downtown Woodstock and The Marietta Square.

We serve sweet pie by the slice and as whole pies in addition to savory pies as “take and bake” options.

We are proud to be a part of two vibrant, downtown communities, and are excited to continue to be a place that people enjoy spending time together over pie and coffee.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

Pie Bar was a hobby for me. I baked pies and served them to my friend and co-workers.

Pie Bar became a business once my husband, Cody, got involved. He understood things like “revenue,” “cost of goods,” and “profit.” Over the first several years of our business we had very defined roles: I was responsible for making really great pies while he was focused on keeping our business in good standing: paying taxes, running payroll, and keeping all of the behind the scenes tasks going.

As our business grew, our roles began to shift, and I started taking on more of a business-centric role. He was able to teach me how to properly project out payroll costs, how to ensure we were receiving payment from vendors on time, and how to budget for things like unexpected costs in our business (because it is not the food industry without a refrigeration unit going out here and there!)

I was fortunate to have someone already so close to me be in a position to partner with me on Pie Bar. I know this is not the case for many people when they start a business. As Pie Bar has continued to grow I have made it a large part of my mission to share these things with our leadership team because I want to ensure that they know how to properly run a business should they ever be in a position where they want to start one of their own.

Any advice for managing a team?

Managing people is a job on top of the job that most entrepreneurs already have of running their business. Before starting Pie Bar I had very little experience managing others. In fact, if I look back at my first several years of managing people, my cheeks turn a little red, because I can easily think about all of the times I did it wrong.

The good news is, as long as you are constantly striving to understand how to best serve your team and your organization as a whole, then you are doing something right!

The best advice I can give when it comes to managing people is to think about them. Consider them. Consider their time, their feelings, their opinions, and use those things to inform your decision making. When you are managing people, you should not be putting yourself first, but instead, you should be thinking about how to best serve the people helping you run and grow your business.

Contact Info:

• Website: Orderpiebar.com
• Instagram: Pie_Bar
• Facebook: orderpiebar