We recently connected with Tracy DeVore and have shared our conversation below.

Tracy, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – walk us through the story?

Knowrealitypie began when I moved here 8 years ago from Northern California, leaving my established work life and family there, to reconnect with my high school sweetheart, Kelly Deco. Life choices took us in different directions for about 40 years, but we probably always should have always been together. I took the risk to up and move to Los Angeles for love, basically starting my life over at 54 years of age! I was able to make a lateral transfer to the legal field in Los Angeles, and continued making pies and teaching pie classes as I had been doing in Northern California, only in Los Angeles. When Kelly tasted pies I was making as a hobby, he said that nobody “knows real pie” anymore. Kelly is a music artist who had a music video, No Reality, and the name Knowrealitypie was born. Kelly thought I was good enough to begin a small bakery business and encouraged me to branch out, so I took an early retirement from my day job/career in the legal field for over 30 years, and opened up a tiny storefront pie shop in Eagle Rock where we live together, which we still have today. Our combined love of the creative arts and music collided, with Kelly and I co-owning the pie business, setting a wedding date for early next year, and Kelly writing an album, Constellation, inspired by our relationship, with 5 Time Grammy Award Producer Val Garay, and now signed by Deko Entertainment. Big risks!

Tracy, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Knowrealitypie is a small Mom & Pop shop, crafting quality mini pies, slices, galettes and hand pies, in a tiny storefront located at 5106 Townsend Avenue, in Eagle Rock. We are open only Friday – Saturday, but processing whole pie orders 7 days a week. We offer mini pies, slices and galettes at the shop in a variety of sweet and savory flavors, and folks can also order whole pies online for pickup a few weeks out. We have a new Take & Bake pie duo, featuring a savory pie & sweet pie, you bake up at home, and they have become wildly popular. I began baking pies 20 years ago, as an homage to my mother, herself the family pie baker, who passed away from Cancer at an early age. I spent time with her before she passed, learning her craft and ultimately, making it my own. It became my mission to make the best pies possible as a legacy to her memory. Our company, which consists of only myself and Kelly Deco, strives to create the best tasting, quality ingredient, uniquely flavored pies, not driven by quantity. Because of that, we bake a certain amount of pies according to season, place them at the shop, and they do sell out! We are 11-time KCRW Pie Contest winners, from 2014-2023, winning the grand Best in Show Pie award this year in 2023! I have judged the pie contest, given pie demonstrations, and continue to teach seasonal pie classes to help others find the joy I found in making a great pie, and also, to be able to succeed at doing so. I am a self-taught baker, with a network of baking pie shop friends, ranging from New York to Texas, to kick around flavor ideas with. Kelly and I so appreciate all of our pie fans who come out in force each week, and who carried us through during Covid, and post-Covid, trying to recover business losses with rising costs. Although we have a wealth of pie making experience, we are always trying new techniques and flavors to improve our pies, to make the best pies we can for our customers and pie fans, sourcing the very best fruits, cocoa, and seasonal ingredients. My kids inspire pie flavors and include it this way – Charity, Butterscotch Apple, Joli, Molten Chocolate Crackle, and Michael, Triple Berry.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

We have built a solid reputation with pie patrons coming from very far away as well as our immediate community, and continue to be featured on I Heart Radio, the Dave Chang Show, and regularly featured in the Los Angeles Times, Eater LA, Pasadena Now Magazine, Thrillist, Restaurant Guru to name just a few, because we maintain a consistency in our pies that we think people enjoy but more importantly, can rely on. We were named by Thrillist as one of the 25 Best Pie Shops in America this year and we agree with that! Listen, your company can have all the press and pie awards in the world, but if a customer comes in time and again and isn’t wowed by your product, you lose. It is important to us to maintain a consistent product and again, make the very best pies we can each week. Having said that, pie can be subjective, meaning that not every pie will resonate with every single person that tries them but we hope our pies do! We are so intent on making quality pies, that sub-par baked items are not sold but rather, donated to the local Fire Department because they are still great but we are super, super, picky!!!! We listen to feedback our pie customers give, and make the pies they are wishing for as much as we can. We have a large number of pie flavors, that we rotate weekly with a few super favorites and award winners such as the Triple Berry Cabernet, Cherry Zinfandel & Caramel Mango Rum on the menu regularly. We also feel, that to scale our business up to a manufacturing or quantity driven level by opening up other locations, sadly always equals a dip in the quality of product, so, we have no plans to do so in the immediate future. We would however, welcome a new space that would enable folks to have perhaps, a Chicken Pot Pie and salad, and slice of sweet pie, on site. Currently, we have tables and chairs outside, but no facility to serve savory or sweet pies on site, just grab and go Take & Bakes and a walkup window for takeout pies. One can dream, right?

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Hmm. Why do I think we are resilient? We were the only succeeding business in our building during all of Covid! And we are still here, finally in the black! Because we put so much love and high quality ingredients into our pies, and whole pie prices have risen due to constantly rising ingredient prices in the economy, there is very little return of profit; but, we’re okay with that as long as the bills get paid because, for us it comes down to a love of pie, crafting high quality pies with a homey-comforting feel, and giving our pie patrons the joy of a great pie. It took a LOT of pivoting during Covid to keep our business up and running, and we are proud of the fact that we are still going strong when so many here in Eagle Rock, folded. We put in a special farm style door, where we could have contactless pick up at the pie door. We liked the concept so much, it is still there now. Folks can walkup to the pie door window, view the menu, and then pick up pies to take home, or share outside at a table. Maybe, just maybe, this all means we make a pretty darn good pie and in this day and age of all the strife going on politically, and economically, and heck, with life just being pretty hard these days, a good, comforting pie treat, hits the spot. We aim to hit that sweet or savory spot every week. There will be weeks when I get tired from working 24/7 as the sole pie maker, and we will close a weekend here and there, or when a personal life event happens because hey, we have a life too. Someone once told me I could never make a living from baking pies with passion and that I was out of my mind, making fun of me. Follow us on Instagram or the Website, www.Knowrealitypie, for updates, and we’ll see you soon! Eat Real, Eat Good Pie! Cheers!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.Knowrealitypie.com
• Instagram: Knowrealitypie
• Facebook: Knowrealitypie
• Yelp: Knowrealitypie
• Other: Google Knowrealitypie to see all of the additional Media we have/have had!
• Kelly’s website for music, www.kellydeco.com, and, www.dekoentertainment.com/giveaways

Image Credits
photo credit: Kelly Deco and Tracy Devore