By a bustling, pie-scented kitchen, The News-Letter spoke with small business owner Mary Wortman about her journey from teaching first grade to running Dangerously Delicious Pies in Canton, soon to be rebranded as B-More Pies and Sweets.
Mary Wortman: My husband and I have owned this business since January 2012. Before that, I taught school for 25 years. He was in the steel mill industry. I was looking to do something new. We kind of just jumped in not knowing anything about business. We had one philosophy: failure is not an option and learn quickly.
Now, all that being said, we have had licensing agreement with the founder of Dangerously Delicious for 13 years. It expired in December. We just found out that he doesn't want to renew. We have a extension until June to use the logos, but then we're going to be B-More Pies and Sweets. We think that this area — a young professional area — is going to really like it.
The News-Letter: Can you tell me about what your new business will look like?
MW: I want to hold onto our current customers. This area really loves our quiches.
We are a seasonal-driven business. Thanksgiving: crazy. Christmas: crazy. Our business model right now is to really capitalize on those holidays that we know people are coming in. We really want to keep an eye on what’s coming up in the calendar.
I really like the area we are in: just like really, really nice customers.
N-L: Could you tell me about some of your favorite experiences?
MW: So, there's two holidays that are coming up: one is the mathematical Pi Day; 3.14 — it's huge here. We are sponsors to the Maryland Science Center every year, so we donate a bunch of pies to them because they have all these kids come in for field trips for Pi Day. They do experiments and math, then they get a little piece of pie. That's always been fun.
Canton Square is known for the Saint Patrick’s Day celebration. They do a race where everybody gets dressed up in their green. Then, they do a bar crawl the following week and then the following weekend is their big party. They shut down some of the streets and people just go from bar to bar. So that's always been fun to us, because we tend to be — when they need to take a break from their daydrinking and what they are doing.
They come to us, they get their coffee, they get their piece of pie. We get to enjoy their costumes and their... you know... [laughs]
N-L: Their energy.
MW: Right! That's always a fun time of year.
Thanksgiving gives me a headache every year. But I have to admit, I love the adrenaline of it all. We do so many corporate orders, I mean big orders. I think we work with about four or five real estate agents that give 200 pies each. We call it our Super Bowl because Thanksgiving and Christmas get us through the slow months.
N-L: What’s it like on one of those days when you're making 200 pies?
MW: It's a lot of planning. My husband and I are co-owners, and then our son is here full time as a manager — he does most of our shipping. But it takes the three of us to just plan out all the ingredients. They'll start buying things early so it doesn’t hit us all at once. I'm very blessed to have a staff that’s been with me Thanksgiving after Thanksgiving.
N-L: When you say shipping, I mean, you're talking about UPS, not just UberEats.
MW: Right, so we do have UberEats, DoorDash and GrubHub, but then there’s this company called Goldbelly. They ship nationwide. They hook up with businesses iconic to cities across the United States [to ship food].
I had a woman call me one time and she said, “I was really hesitant about it when I saw the prices, but my parents are elderly and I always order flowers for their anniversary. I spend $75 or $80 to get flowers. This year, I did something different. I sent them a chicken pot pie. They were floored. They loved it; they ate on it all week.”
She said, “I fed them something homemade for a week and it was less than flowers that they were going to throw away in the trash can.” So, I was like, “I’d never really thought of it that way, but that’s a nice story.”
N-L: Do you have any favorite stories about customers local to this area?
MW: It’s hard to say. We've had engagements here. We do a lot of weddings. We had one couple that got engaged here. Then, we did their pies for their wedding, and then they’ll always come back and do a couple slices for their anniversary.
The Baltimore Orioles were using our pies. That was one of our best times. They were using our pies at the end of an extraordinary game — it was like a walk-off win — to smash in the face of the player when he was doing his interview. You know, like the Gatorade baths that they do. Well, there was a player at the time on our team, Adam Jones. When they were doing their interview, he would go down into the locker room. He would take a towel and he’d fill it with shaving cream. He’d come out and get it on their face. And the players were complaining because it stung their eyes, the shaving cream.
A friend of mine had said, “Oh, you should get cream pies up to them. Just, you know, whipped cream pie.” I actually called. I climbed up this phone chain until I reached somebody and they were like, "Oh, we really like this idea. But we have to talk to Adam Jones.”
I just thought it wasn’t going to happen. Then, that night, I went home and I was checking my email and I had an email from that player, Adam Jones, and he was like, “We’re going to do this. I love it.”
We had a couple seasons, I want to say two and a half seasons. It was great. We started to see people with signs like, “Pie them!”
N-L: Did you ever see it happen?
MW: Oh, yeah, yeah. We'd always watch it and the community was really into it too. They would wait, because the interview always happened after the game, of course, so everybody wouldn't turn the TV off. They were like waiting for the interview to see if he’d come out.
N-L: Do you have a favorite pie yourself?
MW: Yes, I do. For our savory pies, we do a steak and mushroom one, which is unbelievable. Right now, we are doing salted caramel, but I love that whole line: we have one that’s just plain with salted caramel; we have that same pie, but they put toffee crunch on top; one that they sprinkle with Old Bay.
N-L: What is one thing that you're excited about for this new business?
MW: Well, I am very excited about the extent of it. The creativity part of that, it's unending for me, and I am excited about really promoting the different holidays for people because they get so excited and I get excited – I taught school for 25 years so that was just in me.
N-L: And what age did you teach?
MW: First grade. Yes, I loved it. Loved it. Loved it. And well, you can imagine, first graders just go from holiday to holiday. You know, as soon as Halloween’s over, they’re like, “We’re ready.”
So, that’s in me. And I’ve been talking a lot to my husband about that. That's really exciting me now because there's just so many little things that I have filed in my memory that I know that I can bring out, too.
N-L: Have you always been a baker yourself?
MW: No. No, neither one of us knew anything about running a business or baking. In fact, my husband probably cooks more than I do. My mother’s a wonderful baker, I never just got that trait from her. But I’m really good at organization, I feel like that's something that I was able to bring to the table with this business.
I always feel like when I look at something that I can make it better, like I just jump in. And my husband's always been, “If you want to do it, let's do it.” He's the support and it works, you know? We're a good team that way.
It was hard giving up teaching because I loved it. From little on up, that’s all I wanted to be: a teacher. But it's different when you work for yourself, you know? It really is. We’re here every day, even if it's just for a couple hours.
N-L: For sure, it’s that creative freedom, but also that personal freedom, too.
MW: Right, yeah. When I think back, there's a lot of things I miss about teaching, but there's a lot of things I don't miss. So, this is nice. It’s fun. I love the neighborhood; I love the customers. They come in and they know us, and we know them.
The one thing I do really miss [from when I taught] is: when you have a weekend, you can turn it off. Because I never turn it off. Sometimes at night, I want to go to sleep so bad, but I'm thinking of a billion things and I'm picking up my phone making myself notes. Even when we go [away], we have our offices set up. We're working, you know? Different scenery, but we still work.
N-L: For any student entrepreneur or someone who wants to shift from a fixed schedule to doing their own business, what would your advice for them be?
MW: My advice is if you're passionate about it, do it because it's always going to be in you and you won't be able to get rid of it. Like I said, our philosophy was: failure is not an option, and we just jumped in. We had to learn quickly. But I really do think that this has become a passion of mine. I can't see my life without it.
The other advice I have for any business owner is just to start slow. What we did is we didn't take out a big loan. We just did things gradually, and that, I think, really, was the success of it. So, I always say start small, start slow — but go for it.
