But we all know that junk foods aren't for everyday consumption. There are definite issues of privilege tied up in discussions of people's diets, so I'm not here to soapbox about it.
I'm here to tell you why I, as a chef, and a business person, will charge you at least $25 for a lemon meringue pie. $30, in fact, if you earn it. In a heartbeat, without apology, and with sincere understanding and good wishes for people whose budgets don't allow for $25 or $30 pies.
______
"Are you serious?" She'd just finished eating a slice, and, upon first bite, leaned back in her chair with eyes closed and proclaimed it ambrosial and otherworldly and transformative, and that should've been my first clue that she was nuts, but it wasn't, because sometimes, I am dumb. So she inquired about ordering a whole pie. "Are you serious? How can you charge that much? That's crazy!" Her nose wrinkled up and, I swear, her eyes shrunk backward into her head, somehow. As if I'd told her something like... well...
That's pretty much exactly how she reacted to the words twenty-five plus tax.
I'm so thankful that most customers seem to accept the prices I charge. I'm thankful that they trust me to price items as I need to. And I actually love working with people whose budgets might not typically have room for luxury items, like fancy baked goods or catered events. I love making it happen, because I love creating or contributing to an atmosphere where people can participate in the deeply social, deeply personal, and deeply primal rituals of physical nourishment. Blah blah blah basically I like making pretty food and making people fat and happy and sometimes drunk if I can 'cause drunk people tip better.
But that "crazy" talk up there? I despise that kind of exchange with a customer. I really do. It's never worth replying to, even though I do, sometimes: "No, the price is not 'crazy.' It is expensive. But it's not crazy, given the experience you'll have, and given our costs in creating the experience." By the end of that statement, they've usually either interrupted to continue berating me, or they're walking away, or calling their hipster daughter-in-law, who recommended me, to complain. It makes make me sad, to know the wonderful experience I could've created for them if we'd been able to dialogue a little.
But really, though? It pisses me right straight off. It's ugly. It's boorish. It's just plain rude. Call me crazy, but: don't call me crazy. It's not gonna make me drop the price. It's not gonna make me inclined to work with your budget. It leaves me nowhere to go with you. Basically, you've just sailed directly into I'd-like-to-not-deal-with-you-anymore territory, and I may or may not jack the price up a little just to make you go away, rude person. 'Cause, to me, it's just like walking into someone's home and berating them for how much they paid for their furniture, with absolutely no knowledge of either the price or whether their finances can accommodate the price. It's rude and crazy for a home cook - even a very good home cook - to walk into a professional food business and call their prices craaaaazy without any relevant frame of reference.
And I'm happy to tell you more.
1. There's pie, and there's Walmart pie. I know it's en vogue to hate Walmart; I've never met a person who's happy to work there, but while I know plenty of small business owners who lose business to Walmart, I also know plenty of people who, in the short-term, can afford to feed their families because of Walmart. So there's that. Privilege is a serious, relevant issue when criticizing Walmart, and I'm not crapping on people who shop there.
But I'm totally crapping on the ways in which Walmart affects consumer expectations, particularly where they intersect with my small-business practices. Walmart can crank out 3983598395 pies per day, using automated equipment and the lowest-quality ingredients they can, and make them available to you literally twenty-four hours a day. That's not a judgment-based statement; it is a fact. The only real reason this is relevant to me as a businessperson is that millions of people use a $6 Walmart pie as the standard by which they measure the prices, quality, and availability of food items across the board. And that is relevant because...
2. ... Unfortunately, with the proliferation of highly-processed foods in any mainstream marketplace, items made with whole foods are considered more problematic; they have shorter shelf lives, often require refrigeration, freezing, or otherwise "special" handling (which used to be standard handling), and are more expensive. Do you know that there are people who are afraid to purchase baked goods because they contain real butter? Well, is it gonna go bad? Well, yes, darlin!' Eventually, it will! Because it's real food! Which goes bad, if you don't eat it! Because it was made for eating! It wasn't made for storage! I'm not saying a Walmart pie isn't sometimes yummy; I'm saying that Walmart pie is made primarily for long-term storage, and food made primarily for eating, from ingredients made primarily with sustainability and responsible production in mind, will always cost you more money. I wish it weren't so. But I can't control a single thing about it. And my inability to control those costs is relevant because...
3. ...I use higher-quality ingredients in my cooking, because I am currently in a position to use them. That hasn't always been true, and it may not always be true, but it's a position I've committed to for as long as I can sustain it. I'm not all about the buzzwords, because many of them are meaningless, but those buzzwords, like "grassfed" and "organic" (the only buzzword with consistent relevancy) and "free-range" and "cage-free" items were, at one point, not part of food culture, because they were simply how animals were raised and how products were produced. Those products didn't require a totally different designation and pricepoint. They were cheap, easily attainable, and standard. That's not the case any longer. They are more expensive to purchase, and they are often more problematic to source. Which is relevant because...
4. .... Every raw material in the world is more expensive than it was fifty years ago, the cost of living has increased, and wages, etc., have been increased accordingly. High-quality, responsibly-produced ingredients require more time to source than their conventionally-produced counterparts. BUT: the amount of labor involved in making a scratch lemon meringue pie hasn't decreased in relation to how much those labor hours actually cost, or how much electricity costs, or how much insurance costs, or how much my time costs - my time, which is, unfortunately for ME, often the most easily-sacrificed cost available to me in pursuit of creating items I love for someone's pleasure. I don't always pay myself for my time; I definitely don't always pay myself enough for my time. But I always soak, scrub, zest, and juice real organic lemons for your pie. And that's before I make the crust, before I make the filling, and before I time the meringue to be ready while your filling is still hot, so it adheres properly before broiling. Walmart doesn't do that, so if you want it, you have to pay someone to do it. Usually while they're also doing eight million other things. Which is relevant because...
5. ...I already kinda said it, but I'm giving it its own number, because I want you to know it so hard... The costs of pies made by a home cook for pleasure do not carry the same weight as the costs carried by a pie made for business purposes. Unlike a pie made in a home, the price of a pie in a business covers much more than raw material and labor (which is likely not a concern anyway). So pricing lectures from a home cook - even a very good home cook - it's like being angry that we communicate in Chinese in a professional kitchen, even though you speak Greek in a home kitchen. It's. Just. Not. The. Same. Not better, not worse - just different. If you walk into China expecting Greece, you will be disappointed.
6. And the bottom line is: lemon meringue pies are luxury items. Drive-thru mozzarella sticks are luxury items. Even a Walmart pie is a luxury. I would love to make you a luxury item, like a gorgeous brioche, or a tiered themed birthday cake, or a romantic candlelit dinner for twelve, if that's your thing (I don't judge). Just know that I have absolutely zero qualms about charging you enough money to cover my costs. If you're trying to work a lemon meringue pie into your budget, I'm not here to tell you that you're crazy for spending less than $25 on a pie; there are markets out there to fit every budget, from Walmart prices, to my prices, and way beyond my prices. The only judgment I'll offer is this: Frankly, if you're eating pie that often, it's worth your while to pay more for a pie made with whole foods...
I also make a damn good lemon meringue pie. It's worth your $25. And if you're a jerk to me, I consider that worth a $5 surcharge.
So there.
Cookies, though... I'll give those away.
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