Today we’d like to introduce you to Amy Hardin.
Hi Amy, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
I was actually an Arlington police officer for 20 years. I did 15 years on patrol and another five years as a detective. I retired in 2020 and originally wanted to go to culinary school to be a chef. I love to cook and wanted to do that professionally after I retired.
My plans changed after I had a key lime pie from Buttermilk Sky Pie. I was at a baby shower, and someone had brought one. I am a key lime pie lover and was always on the hunt for a good one. After having a piece, I was convinced it was the best key lime pie I had ever had and decided to go to this pie shop. I didn’t know at the time that they were a franchise.
After visiting the store, I was convinced that we needed one in Flower Mound. I grew up in Coppell and have always lived in the metroplex. I was living in Flower Mound with my husband and our three girls. I told them that I was seriously considering opening up a pie shop. Our middle daughter Kylie cried and said she thought that was a terrible idea because I had never even baked a pie. That’s right, I had never baked a pie before and wanted to open a pie shop! They all thought I was crazy.
But I had been praying about what I wanted to do after my police career, and I knew this was what God wanted me to do. I hear from the Lord in repetition and have heard multiple references about pie after this key lime pie experience! My pastor at church mentioned pie, someone brought me a Buttermilk Sky Pie at work and told me they were amazing (this was after I had found out about it), and I read in Matthew that “life is not pie in the sky” (The Message Translation) and I knew God was telling me to trust Him and go for it. I didn’t care that I had never baked a pie. I could learn a new skill, and boy did I! Now I can bake HUNDREDS of pies all at once!
I really trusted the Lord for this big career change because, on paper, it didn’t make sense. After one week in Tennessee for training, I opened up the Flower Mound location in October 2020. We had five flavors that we opened with, and now we have 12!
We make our pies in regular 9” sizes, individual 4-inch sizes, and tiny little 2” bite-size pies. We make all of our pies in the pie shop and from scratch. We even press our own pie crust from scratch. We have ten flavors year-round that never change and seasonal pie flavors that change every few months. Of course, my favorite is the key lime, but we have the traditional apple, chocolate cream, coconut cream, cherry, pecan, southern custard (buttermilk), I-40 (pecan with chocolate chip and coconut), chewy chocolate chip, peanut butter cream, and several others.
We have a HUGE double rack oven, so our location can make the most pies! Because of this, we hold a lot of big events like weddings, baby and bridal showers, celebrations, and many other big catering orders. We even offer delivery for large orders and have delivered as far as Granbury and other cities outside the metroplex.
The pie shop has been a huge blessing to my life. It’s been amazing to see how God orchestrated all of the things into place to make our pie shop successful. I’m very picky about who I hire because customer service is extremely important to me. I want people to walk in and notice something different about my shop. The pies are amazing and can sell themselves, but I want the experience to be amazing as well. When you come to a pie shop, you should always leave happier than when you came in. I have an amazing staff who work really hard to make the pies and serve them to you as well.
I have met some amazing people that I would never have met without the pie shop. I have loved getting to know all of the customers that come into the shop. It is always fun seeing the regulars come in but also to see people who have never come in before. People always comment on the smell of the shop when they come in. They usually say, “It smells SOOO good in here”. We love hearing that!
God has blessed me in more ways than I can count, and it all was because I trusted Him for my future plans. I had no idea that it would turn out to be as amazing as it has been, and I’m so thankful for that. I know how many people struggle when opening a business, and we have had so much support that it’s made us successful. I never take that for granted. I know that without amazing customers, we would not be able to do that.
We are the busiest at Thanksgiving, followed by Christmas. We make THOUSANDS of pies during the week of Thanksgiving. We definitely recommend pre-ordering your pies early since every year people order earlier than the year before to make sure they get what they want. As we get closer to Thanksgiving, we narrow our menu down and limit the flavors. An early pre-order means you get whatever size and flavor you want. It’s only March/April, and we already have orders for Thanksgiving if that gives you an idea of how busy it gets!
I hope that anyone who has not tried a pie before comes into my shop and tries one. Every member of my staff has a different favorite one, so it’s really just whichever flavor you like the most. I hope to always be making great pie and love owning a pie shop. I have become “the pie lady” out in public, and that’s a name I love to have in the town where I live. I truly cannot think of a better job to have because it always brings a smile to people’s faces. I hope to see you in soon!
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
The main issue when we first opened was that we opened right in the middle of COVID. We were originally supposed to open in April 2020, and shipments were delayed. We finally got all of our equipment and found out the new building we were in had no gas. Our oven runs on gas, so you can see why this was an issue. It took several months to install the gas line, so we didn’t open until October 2020.
Even though this was very frustrating, I realized that this was a blessing in disguise. I didn’t retire from the police department until August 2020 and didn’t quite know how much work the pie shop would be. There is no way that I could have done both at the same time. So, retiring in August and not opening until October gave me a few months to enjoy retirement. I did a lot of things with my family during that time, and those are precious memories for me. When we opened in October, we were slammed with all the new hype of a pie shop. Then Thanksgiving and Christmas followed, and it was nonstop. I worked every day for those three months, and it was exhausting. We had no idea what we were doing, and it showed. We didn’t have a good system, and we had a parking lot FULL of people. Thankfully, my husband has since created a flawless system, and we can handle really big holiday seasons with a lot more ease than that first year!
Thanks – so, what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I’ve had many jobs that I think prepared me to own a pie shop. My very first job at the age of 15 was actually in a bakery! I worked at the Paradise Bakery in the Vista Ridge Mall in Lewisville. I am dating myself because that mall was just built when I started.
I worked all throughout college at Chili’s Bar and Grill in Denton, Lewisville, and Las Colinas. I was a waiter/bartender and eventually became a corporate trainer for them and got to open up new locations.
My greatest accomplishment was definitely retiring from the Arlington Police Department. I worked there for 20 years and retired exactly twenty years later from my hire date. I set a goal when I started to do 20 years, and that’s exactly what I did.
That was an extremely hard job based on the things I saw, the calls I answered, and the people I had to deal with, and there were a lot of difficult days. Shift work on a family is hard, and there were a lot of missed holidays, birthdays, and other important dates that I couldn’t make. I also always say, “No one ever has a good day when they call the police.” So, it’s just call after call of bad news, and that’s hard for a person. I think everyone expects cops to be cold and callous, but sometimes people forget that we are humans, too. We are people, just like everyone else, and that job can take its toll on you. Selling pies is a much happier experience! I always say people are so much happier to see me in this line of work than in my previous career!
Are there any important lessons you’ve learned that you can share with us?
I would definitely say that I think the most important lesson I’ve learned throughout my life is just to trust in the Lord even when it doesn’t make sense. I’ve seen God do so many incredible things in my personal life and now my professional life that I have learned to fully trust Him.
Pricing:
- 9” pies- $36.00
- 4” pies- $8.00
- 4 pie Pack of 4” pies- $27.00
- 2” pies- $25 per dozen box
Contact Info:
- Website: https://buttermilkskypie.com/locations/flower-mound/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/buttermilkskypieflowermound/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php/?id=100063551053218
