About Us
From Laurie Bowen & Kristin Broadley, “The Pie Ladies”: We started our business in the spring of 2009 on beautiful Cape Cod. We’ve both worked in restaurants here on the Cape and always dreamed of opening a local restaurant and pie shop for our friends and neighbors. We have a great recipe for pies that we’ve been using for years.
When we opened, our local newspaper,The Barnstable Patriot, featured us in an article. We were thrilled.
We make home-made pies. We believe in top quality ingredients, and attention to detail when making the pies. Our all meat chicken pies quickly became famous in Centerville. We were busy during our first few months.
In August, 2009, Eunice Kennedy Shriver passed away. She lived in Hyannis Port, only a couple of miles from our shop. Although we never met Mrs. Shriver, it was a great loss to Cape Cod and the world. We have both been long-time supporters of her life’s work, supporting people with disabilities. We have volunteered for many years at Cape Abilities, a local non-profit organization that helps people with disabilities across Cape Cod. Cape Abilities was founded in 1968, the same year that Mrs. Shriver founded The Special Olympics. Many Special Olympians from Cape Abilities participated in Mrs. Shriver’s funeral service.
We knew that many famous people would be coming to Cape Cod to attend Mrs. Shriver’s funeral – to respect and honor her legacy and life’s work. We thought that Oprah Winfrey might attend, we knew that she was an old friend of Maria Shriver and the family. When Kristin was getting an allergy shot, she overheard someone mention where Oprah was staying.
Kristin decided to send a couple of pies, including our chicken pie , to Oprah at her hotel. Laurie thought Kristin was crazy – figuring the only people who would eat the pies would be the security guards – and pies cost money. But something wonderful happened.
Gayle King, who was also on Cape Cod with Oprah, tried the pies and so did Oprah. They loved them! They called us, and ordered more. We delivered them to the plane, before they left Cape Cod. A reporter at the Cape Cod Times heard about it, and wrote an article. But there was a miscommunication back at Oprah’s office, so the story read that Oprah’s spokewoman ”denied” that Oprah had tasted our pies.
What a mess. We had people coming into our shop and calling us - thinking we had made up the whole story. But then another wonderful thing happened.
Gayle King called us and we told her about the article. Gayle talked about it on her radio show. Then Oprah called reporter Sarah Shemkus at The Cape Cod Times to clear things up, and said “it’s a great pot pie, I’ll tell you.”
Then things got VERY busy at our shop. We’ve heard from people all across the country who want to order our pies. We started making pies ’round the clock in our pie shop. We knew we needed more space, and more people to help us.
So we’ve decided to “complete the circle” that started when Oprah and Gayle came to Cape Cod to attend Eunice Kennedy Shriver’s funeral. We’re now working with Cape Abilities to expand our pie production. We set up a pie kitchen at Cape Abilities, click here to take a video tour. We’re creating jobs for people with disabilities right here on Cape Cod, something that we believe in.
We’re working as hard as we can to expand production but we will always put quality and our customers first – that’s why we started our business. We now ship our famous chicken pies across the United States (except Alaska and Hawaii). We’re working hard to expand our business.
Thank you for your support. And a very special thank you to Oprah Winfrey and Gayle King for helping us make our dream come true, so we can help other people make their dreams come true.
