Last December, sisters Andrea and Stephanie French miraculously managed to open an entire shop, from scratch, in just 9 days. Originally intended to be a ‘pop up’ Shoppe open for just one month, The Pie Shoppe became permanent and is still thriving several months later.

Everything in their shop, including the ceramic cone coffee makers, wooden details, artwork and of course, their pie, is made from scratch by themselves or their community. The French sisters believe that when operations get too big, something is often lost, and so they have committed their entire operation to the art of hand-crafted goods. The also have a strong thrust towards sustainability and almost everything they use is compostable or recyclable.

Last week, Lindsay and I visited the French sisters in their shop, and I actually could not believe how fast Andrea could chop apples—so uniform, so precise.

There was no air of chaos as the two went about making their dozens of pies for the day. They were happy to make pies and chat with us.

The Pie Shoppe is also home to Panoramic Coffee Roasters, an iniative by Stephanie French, who roasts coffee for the shop every few days. Wanting to get into roasting coffee, Stephanie decided to elicit her own knowledge and entrepreneurial drive and invested in a coffee roaster.

She’s self-taught, and has quickly gained a loyal following; all her coffee is sourced from smaller farms using sustainable and ethical production methods, and her beans come from all over the world; some of her favourite roasts have come from Yemen, Columbia, Burundi, and Mexico. She roasts coffee for the shop and for whole bean sale every few days, so you can be sure it’s fresh.

Certainly, one of the most charming things about these sisters is their willingness to make a project happen. They built an entire shop using just a few resources and based it upon a simple concept: pie and coffee.

Though it’s obvious an immense amount of work has gone into their start-up, their story is inspirational for anyone desiring to create work for themselves in an area of personal interest.

And the pie is darn good, too!

Here’s a lovely short film about their opening: