The Pie Shop Days

With all of the new happenings in life lately, I really wanted to take a minute to share a little bit about the time I spent owning a physical small business (as opposed to the online business I’ve got now), and the way that it shaped this new world I’ve found myself in. I wouldn’t have this without that, and I’ll always be thankful for it.

My subscribers here are a solid mix of those who knew me in those years, and those who didn’t. 

If you knew me, thank you so much for sticking around for all of the changes, and for your continued support, both then, and now. It truly lightens my heart knowing I am offering something valuable enough to keep you coming back for more.

For those that are just now hopping in on this journey of mine, hello. It is so good to meet you. I can’t wait to connect with you over something that I love the way that I love baked goods. I have a lot of hopes for what you might gain from this little adventure of mine, but whether you get those exact things, or not, I hope you get something that adds a little light to your life in one way or another. 

Milk and Honey Bakehouse happened suddenly, on the tail end of 2020 when COVID decided to make the world a difficult and weird place to try and navigate. I am not good at navigating. It started with losing a job I loved dearly with all of the restaurant closures that were happening, and it only snowballed from there. 

I got the news that I would be losing my job at the beginning of October, and by the beginning of November, I was attending my first vendor event selling pie slices to the public. That first vendor event set the tone for the life of my bakery. It was a double sell-out weekend full of so much love and support from both customers and other vendors alike. It will always be one of my fondest memories.

I found a commercial kitchen to rent out 15 minutes from home. I used the back door of the building for customer pick ups (nothing says “Welcome!” like a back door in an alley right next to a dumpster), and worked really hard to try and know what I was doing. I am not good at knowing what I am doing. 

My saving graces in those days were my dad, and one of my sisters (who, ironically, is named Grace). They both have many years of experience under their belts as entrepreneurs, and I got to ask a lot of questions and get a lot of answers that many people just starting don’t have the privilege of obtaining without experiencing it first hand. 

The following two and a half years were a blurry, happy, stressed, worried, content, thankful, fearful, whirlwind. There were a lot of mornings where my alarm would go off at 3 am, and a lot of nights where I wouldn’t get to leave the kitchen until 10 or 11pm. There were a lot of mornings where I couldn’t imagine getting out of bed to do it all over again, and would lay there longer than I should have (Hello, burnout. It happens, and you push through.)

In those years, I made over 5000 pies, attended multiple vendor events a month, and did holidays with every bit of energy I had. I ate, breathed, and dreamed pie in a very literal way (pretty sure I inhaled enough flour to bake a cake in my lungs). I got to know A LOT of people. I got to connect with A LOT of small business owners who always made me feel a little more excited, and a lot more sane on the hard days. That was my favorite part. 

When I decided to close, it wasn’t because my numbers were in the red (though post-COVID inflation hit and suddenly 60 eggs cost me $30, and I was very much contemplating what it would mean for the future), but it was because I met a very nice man who wanted to marry me and take me away to Missouri. I very gladly let him, but, part of that meant I would have to leave Milk and Honey behind.. At least in the way I knew it to exist. 

After closing the shop, for about 6 months I would say, I couldn’t even think about doing anything related to baking for my own enjoyment. Burnout has a way of taking something you love and turning it into some kind of shadow hanging over you that you’re trying to avoid at all costs. I baked the pies for my own wedding, and it is not an endeavor I would recommend to anyone. 

What it took to reignite the passion in me was doing a little baking for my husband and I in our new home, in a new city, in a new state. And doing it solely for fun and to bless our friends and family when we would have guests. It healed a little part of me that was still recovering from the exhaustion I had carried around while running the business, and gave me that same feeling I had gotten as a teenager baking muffins in my mom’s kitchen. Bursting with joy like I was discovering it all over again. And the longer I sat with that feeling, the more I knew I wasn’t done with small business ownership after all. 

For those of you who followed me in my Milk and Honey days and have stuck around for Dear Old Bakehouse, I want to say that I very much know that showing you videos of pie isn’t quite the same as serving it to you on a sunny spring day at an outdoor vendor event. That’s a difficult experience to replace (for me as well). But, I hope that teaching you how to make pie for yourself, and providing you with my recipes to go along with it, helps you have endless amounts of pie at your disposal for many, many years to come. 

It is, as I like to think of it, an infinite pie hack. 

I say all of this just to tell you that Milk and Honey will always hold a very, very special place in my heart. One thing you learn when you decide to be a small business owner, is that business has to evolve with life. You try, you make mistakes and have big wins, and you keep moving forward with all of that knowledge in your back pocket. Milk and Honey was hard, hard work, and I was at its disposal most days.I loved it nonetheless. Dear Old Bakehouse is a whole new kind of hard, but it’s the kind of hard that makes me feel free and energized and excited most mornings. And, in the end, it is still full of the same heart of me. 

I’m sure it will continue to change and evolve in one way or another, but I am so very happy with the direction it’s taken and the way it’s breathed a little life back into me.

I really just want it to do the same for you. I want it to be a little bright spot in your day, or an answer to a question you’ve had, or an encouragement to you to buy the kitchen thing you’ve always dreamed of owning but could never quite justify it. I just want it to add a little sunshine and sweetness to your days in the way that it has for me.

Thanks for being here, friends. Small business is hard, but it is so, so good. 

With love,

Your Baker, Hannah