It’s Pi Day! What better way to geek out today than to give y’all a feature on San Francisco’s pie purveyors: Three Babes Bakeshop.

Anna and Lenore, the babes and best friends from childhood, have quite a story to them. Both have traditions of pie baking in their family (birthdays consisted of pies and not cakes); in fact, Anna’s great grandfather was the personal pastry chef of JP Morgan and was brought over from Italy! Her family eventually settled in the Central valley and farmed apples, grapes, and other produce.

While the babes went to different places for college – Anna attended UCSB and culinary school and Lenore went back and forth from the East Coast, they remained close. After a battle with cancer and a divorce, Lenore decided she wanted a fulfilling career, moved back to California on Anna’s call, and Three Babes Bakeshop was soon born.

For any of you who have made pies at home, you know that they aren’t easy to scale. But as Lenore points out, they are the best way to engage with customers: “For us, it was telling a certain story about what we thought was important.

Everything in the pies are seasonal as well, another benefit of being on the West Coast. And the Babes get creative with what they have – there are three types of apple pies, nut pies, and a grapefruit custard pie!

When I asked the Babes about any advice they had for starting a food business, they were straight about it – it’s hard. Look for ways to keep overhead costs low (Kickstarter has been a useful platform in raising money), and do things the right way first.

Nowadays, Anna and Lenore are baking pies out a commercial kitchen (which they highly recommend – there isn’t enough space in a home kitchen and you burn out quickly). They have a permanent booth at the Ferry Building Saturday farmer’s market, where they sell 40-80 pies a day (and up to 1,000 on Thanksgiving!), and they are on the hunt for a brick and mortar location, hopefully in the Mission.

You can also find the Babes teaching classes at Good Eggs every month – I recently attended their class on cream pies and it was amazing – and of course, order pies online. Check out the current pies on rotation and get yo’self a slice ASAP.

Happy Pi Day!