Kansas City residents didn’t know what they had until it was gone. Fortunately for them, it came back.

Tippin’s Gourmet Pies is a household name in the region, and has been for 30 years. The southern Midwest hadn’t had any prior experience with the pie, soup and coffee pantry format, so when Tippin’s moved in, it instantly became the model to which all others were compared.

But as the foodservice model began to change, Tippin’s didn’t adapt well. By 2004, the last of 19 Tippin’s foodservice restaurants closed its doors. But that didn’t extinguish the regional brand equity that the pie chain had fostered over its 30-year run. A generation of Kansas Cityans had grown up with the Tippin’s name, and brand awareness remained strong.

Back the story up two years and enter Ball’s Foods, a Kansas City supermarket chain with two platforms–discount Price Chopper stores and high-end Hen House stores. Recognizing the strong brand that Tippin’s had cultivated, Ball’s Foods began experimenting with the pies in its in-store bakery; tinkering, strategizing, and perhaps, unwittingly, laying the groundwork for the next chapter of Tippin’s Pies’ existence. After the last foodservice outlet was shuttered, Ball’s Foods purchased the brand, brought production into its own facility, and began the long, slow process of bringing pie to the forefront in in-store bakery sales.

Pie’s not second fiddle

When Ball’s Foods’ Hen House platform first began with Tippin’s, pies were considered to be a doorway item that retailers highlighted only a couple of times per year. Many retailers offered two pies for $5, a quarter of the $8.99 to $9.99 price tag that the Tippin’s brand commanded. And it wasn’t easy to get the same consumer who wouldn’t bat an eye at paying $30 for a cake to pay $10 for a pie. According to Andy Farris, quality assurance supervisor who answers to “Pie Guy”, the job was to change the perception of pie. With Tippin’s, the company had a premium name–but that was just the starting point.

“We made the commitment to the pie by keeping huge cases constantly in stock, day in day out,” Farris says. “When you have a product every so often, people will forget about it–we made sure that we carried a ton of stock so that every day, if anyone wanted a Bavarian cream pie, we’d have one for them.”

The cases were a bit of a shock to customers who were used to shelf stable pies, loaded with preservatives, sitting out for weeks without issue. The very idea of having to refrigerate pies turned heads, as it implied a new level of freshness.

But at the very beginning, even at the high-end Hen House stores that started the Tippin’s programs, customers balked at the comparatively high price point. And by carrying such a high stock volume, they stood to take a big hit by throwing out $9 pies. But Farris made lemon chess out of that lemon, introducing a single-slice pie program that harvested full pies reaching shelf maturity.

This program started at the same time that consumers trended toward meal replacers and ready-made meals at the supermarket level. The pie slices were naturals as desserts for meals for one, so the timing of the program played right into Hen House’s hands.

“As that started to evolve, and we started seeing what it was doing to our bakeries, we took it to a few more stores,” Farris says. “Eventually, it went to all stores. It became such a huge part of the bakery, we were doing 50 to 100 individual slices daily in every store.”

The individual slices served several purposes. While taking care of stales, the program also expanded the brand. People who may have scoffed at a $10 pie were willing to try it by the slice at a lower price point, especially given the familiar Tippin’s name. And that meant getting the premium product into customers’ mouths. Over time, the pies developed familiarity and affinity. Before long, weekday single-serve customers became weekend $10 pie customers, bringing premium products to share on special occasions.

Once the full-sized pies gained traction and worked their way into the top five sellers in in-store bakery, there they stayed. Now, they are both a big-ticket item at $10 to $15 per pie, and given the proper sunshine to grow and good partnerships with other areas of the retail store, a big volume item.

And that, in a pie shell, is how Hen House took pies from afterthought seasonal item to 40 percent of the annual in-store bakery sales. Realizing they had a winning formula, Tippin’s Gourmet Pies began to expand its reach to wholesale and offer the program nationally.

As a pie company owned by a retailer, Tippin’s is in a unique position to speak to other retailers. “Our own stores are a good testing ground,” says Curt Lafferty, director of national sales. “We do all of our trial and error within before bringing something to market–working out bugs as far as handling procedures. We can speak their language; the same things that they’re going through, we’re going through.”

Expanding wholesale reach

At upwards of 180,000 pies per week, the facility is certainly a volume wholesale bakery–but it’s a unique bakery in that Tippin’s is its own biggest customer. Ball’s Foods stores are the destination for 85 percent of the pies produced in the Kansas City plant. Even so, that leaves about 30,000 pies per week that are being shipped nationally. With a finite number of retail outlets within the company’s regional footprint, the primary focus for growth is wholesaling Tippin’s Pies to retail chains in other regions. Plus, there’s plenty of room for growth.

“The plant is ready to be a 24/5 plant, but we aren’t there for capacity. We’re probably running four shifts regularly, five shifts over the holidays,” says Lafferty. “We have the space to double our staff and shifts, but we have to be careful to do so incrementally.” And that’s without factoring in the newly purchased 50,000 sq. ft. building, which hasn’t yet been officially designated as a bakery or a soup and slurry plant (the brand also encompasses soups).

Currently, retailers such as AJ’s Fine Foods in Phoenix, Rouses Supermarkets in New Orleans, Festival Foods in Green Bay and Dierbergs Markets in St. Louis are featuring Tippin’s pie programs. The company looks to partner with only one retail outlet in any given region to create a sense of exclusivity, typically looking to higher end retailers that attract consumers shopping on quality instead of price. Lafferty knew the Tippin’s brand had a firm toehold in Dallas, St. Louis, and Kansas City, but he’s pleasantly surprised by the brand’s reach, and the success it’s had far from home.

“I think it’s a stronger brand than what we realized until recently. We competed in American Pie Council national championships, and we were surprised at how many people recognized the name,” Lafferty says. “There is a following there that we underestimated. Now, we’re going to be focusing on pushing that brand even further with the new generation with new marketing tools like Facebook and Twitter; communicating to the younger generation.”

Production and quality assurance

Production begins at 6 a.m., and is finished around 3 p.m. Baltazar Fernandez, plant manager and bakery director, works off of purchase orders, so every day is different. Controller Linda Ainsworth receives the orders, and on a 14-day lead time, Fernandez uses them to forecast ingredient needs, labor needs and line plans. Details such as ensuring light-colored fruits aren’t going into depositors after cherries–generally grouping similar products–help maximize productivity and minimize changeover and line cleaning down time. These directives are given to four floor managers to be carried out, with Fernandez supervising.

Quality and safety measures begin to be controlled at the floor level. For instance, Tippin’s cooks all of its fruit fillings in kettles set up to not pump until the contents reach the proper temperature. On the macro level, quality control involves pulling three products off of every run, one at the beginning, middle and end. The laboratory studies the samples, and the product is held from order filling until specifications are confirmed to have been met. When Fernandez gives the OK, orders head to Dan Brunsman in shipping and receiving, to be loaded LTL.

Working off of purchase orders requires dexterity and nimbleness–especially in a production facility that doesn’t sit on a lot of product.

“We’re giving the shelf life to the customer, not to ourselves,” Farris says. “In any case, you don’t want to tie up the freezer in dollars anywhere along the line. Considering the way freezers are getting smaller and smaller, food should be in and out–and that’s the way we’ve designed production.”

Everything exiting the plant is frozen. Roughly half of the products coming out of the plant are fully baked and finished. All of these products are distributed internally to Ball’s Foods retail outlets. The other half leave the plant in various states of completion, from empty piecrust with separate filling for finishing, to freezer-to-oven, depending on the type of pie and the order.

The product

Tippin’s differentiates itself on freshness, making everything from scratch, including all dough and fillings.

“Making our own filling is a quality issue with us, a flavor profile issue,” Lafferty says. “It makes a big difference in quality. It also means our product is not shelf stable, has to be refrigerated or frozen, as we don’t have a lot of preservatives.”

All Tippin’s Pies are trans fat-free. “We put the 0 trans on our labels,” Lafferty says. “Some of our customers will realize it, some may not. I don’t know that its made much a difference of sales, but it’s the right direction.”

The lineup of 28 SKUs includes oven filled flavors like Dixie, pecan, coconut, German chocolate, lemon chess and a no sugar-added pumpkin. Cream and meringue pies also are represented, including pineapple cream and key lime. French silk is the top selling pie overall, especially in Kansas City, where it accounts for 70 percent of sales. And Farris thinks the real stars of the show might be the deep-dish fruit pies.

“Fruit pies are special because they’re 76 to 80 percent fruit solids, so you’re not going to see so much slurry, not many xanthum gums or starches,” he says.  “Everyone’s talking about cleaner labels, we’re pretty clean.”

With a lot of gums and starches, a pie filling sets up cleanly on a plate; Tippin’s fillings, on the other hand, will flow. “That can hurt us, there are clients that will walk away from us based on that,” Lafferty says, “but overall, we think it’s a better flavor profile.

“We’re unique in what we do and how we go to market,” he adds. “We’re staying focused on quality. Our growth is just a matter of communicating and getting exposure to the consumer.”

Tippin’s celebrates with employees, customers

On the heels of a five-blue ribbon showing at the American Pie Council’s National Pie Championships, Tippin’s Gourmet Pies, Kansas City, Kan., staged a weekend of events designed to thank employees and reintroduce customers to an old favorite.

The company first held an employee barbecue on May 26. On May 28, Tippin’s took the party to the public at an Overland Park, Kan., Hen House supermarket, hosting an all-day pie festival in the parking lot. The event was designed to reintroduce consumers to the Tippin’s brand, and showcase the blue-ribbon performance. This was the first year Tippin’s participated in the National Pie Championships.

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