Mail-Order Pies: An Expensive Slice Of Nostalgia For Which Many Will Pay
It can cost more to ship a pie than the price of the pie itself, and causes bakers a lot of headaches. So why does business boom over the holidays? Well, that's personal.
It's almost comical — how hard it is to get this pie out of its box. Inside the well-taped cardboard, there are packing peanuts around another box that's inserted so tightly, lifting it out is like playing a game of Operation.
Finally, I can see the pie. The pastry from Virginia's Red Truck Bakery is swaddled in bubble wrap, shrink-wrapped and topped with a circle of cardboard. And inside all of this, baked into a thick reusable tin, is a pristine mincemeat pie that has spent the past day traveling across most of the country to its final destination at my door in Oregon.
Every year, untold numbers of
