Season 3, Episode 8: Savary Island Pie A La Mode

This episode is about Brad Hall continuing his mother's legacy of making pies our community. 

"A mother is a person who seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie.”
― Tenneva Jordan

What a lovely sentiment!  However, I think I'm more from this camp -

Alligator Pie, Alligator Pie
If I don't get some, I think I'm gonna die,
Give away the green grass, give away the sky,
But don't give away my Alligator Pie!
— Dennis Lee
(**first verse of my favourite elementary school poem)

There's only one thing to do here - get some handcrafted pie with handcrafted ice cream (made in your local community, for us it's Savary Island always) for family time around the kitchen table.  You will have the best memories!!   

Where to find
Savary Island Pie Company

 

Savary Island Pie Company
West Vancouver: 1533 Marine Drive, West Vancouver, BC
Tofino: Units #1 & #2 - 230 Main Street, Tofino, BC

Website: www.savaryislandpiecompany.com
Instagram: @savaryislandpieco
Facebook: SIPCOOfficial

Where to find Glo

www.glosays.com | IG: @glosays | Facebook: GloSaysPodcast | LinkedIn: GloSays | BuyMeACoffee: GloSays

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Check out Feedspot’s TOP 25 BUSINESS PODCASTS IN CANADA — I’m #5 on the list!

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Transcript

GLO 0:06
Hey everyone, welcome back to Glo Says, today we talk about pie, how to get the perfect pie crust. Everyone's got their tips and tricks, but it boils down to a perfect combination of fat, flour, liquid and salt, sometimes sugar. And if you get it just right, you'll have a perfectly developed crumbly dough barely holding itself together. But when it's baked, it's the perfect package for your favorite filling. And when it's baking, your home smells wonderful and you are left with all sorts of great memories of eating together around the kitchen table. Fighting for the last piece, maybe adding in some ice cream. That's the fairy tale anyways. But making pie morning after morning, day after day, night after night, sleeping on coolers, fighting to rent a big enough space and doing it all while raising children on your own. So they can eat out of necessity, doing whatever she needed to do over and over again. Whether she felt like it or not in order to provide food for her kids. That's real work, hard work. That kind of work smells of grit and tenacity. There are all kinds of memories rolled into that dough, both warm ones and cold ones. But what grew from those humble beginnings is something I can hear. And of course see that Brad is so proud of. They've just opened their second location in Tofino. What an amazing family legacy that Brad and his family still work so hard to continue. And boy am I glad they do.

Welcome back everyone to this podcast Glo Says and today I'm so happy to speak with Brad Hall. He is the owner operator of savory Island pie company, which I will tell you right now is the best pie company ever. We cannot get enough of it. We wish we lived closer, we always buy two pies at once. It's a fantastic place. And I'm so happy that you are talking to us today. So thank you, right and I've had a chance to talk a little bit. So I've gotten to know a bit about him, but none of the listeners have. So let me start with that. The first thing I noticed about Brad is I looked up his LinkedIn profile and it says that he has a degree in math and that he owns a hardscaping company. So I was like wow, he's a mathematician and he gardens or does hardscape contracting and he makes pies. So really, he's covered all the useful skills for success in life. That's amazing. But I assumed you made pies. I wasn't sure because I know it was a company that your mom started so can you bake by

BRAD 2:45
Gloria I can bake pies I have baked pies I was there in the beginning with my mom running the business working in the business doing everything I can definitely make and bake pies

BRAD 2:58
Okay, I must say my It was like summer jobs and stuff. But before we get

Unknown Speaker 3:01
into part of my ruling my wife did five years ago was with the lemon buttermilk pie. I paid for in Quebec, her and her family in Quebec. So yes,

GLO 3:12
that's so awesome. That is actually our family favorite. That's what so every time I said we buy two pies, one is lemon buttermilk. What's the second one? Do you think could you get

BRAD 3:22
I can guess GLORIA And if you after all these years I'm pretty good at this game. And I didn't know that one of them was lemon buttermilk pie. If I use my math degree and my pragmatic side, I would say Apple but I think that if I use my feminine intuitive, I would say strawberry rhubarb.

GLO 3:40
Hmm. So which one

BRAD 3:41
I got one. I got one other I would say blueberry. Anyway, I'm gonna go back to strawberry rhubarb and apple and gloria. I'm gonna say strawberry rhubarb.

GLO 3:50
Oh, that's you know what? That's a good one. strawberry rhubarb. We have tried to we do like but it's actually apple.

BRAD 3:57
My, my pragmatic wins.

GLO 3:59
Yes, yes. Your pragmatic side wins in our family anyways. So lemon, buttermilk and apple. And sometimes I'll even call ahead to make sure that they have the whole of the lemon buttermilk. Because if they don't, then I have to stop by at your place again on the way home or go back later. And we do it anyway. We do it anyway. Yeah. So we love your pies. So why don't we start with you. Tell me about yourself, Brad. How did you get into the pie business?

BRAD 4:25
Well, my mom entirely my own Savary Island Pie company is my mom. She started this business with the help of a lot of people along the way, including my sisters myself. When we were all younger. I worked in the business going through high school. And I remember back then making about seven, eight bucks an hour dealing with customers. I always loved the service industry. I really enjoy serving people. I loved it when it was it's slow at the restaurant and a customer comes in and I get the opportunity to let them sit down and they order black currant scon I say Have a seat and I get To cut it in half toasted for them butter, different sugar cream, which my mum used to get. We don't get have it any longer. I want to bring it back to our offering because I really like it and Jamboree is. I just love serving people making people happy with food and conversation and atmosphere, all those things at the same time that I was working with. And for my mom and making seven, eight bucks an hour, I was also swinging a hammer building homes in the late 80s on Bowen Island, making $16 an hour and one day I looked at this piece of two by four that I was cutting and I had a little conversation with it. And it didn't talk back to me and it didn't give me any problems. And I thought to myself, I can deal with this two by four for $16 an hour, or I can deal with public all day long. For eight bucks an hour. Glory is really quite exhausting dealing with public all day. It really takes it out of you. I found that the carpentry didn't take anything out of me. It just filled me with energy. And to this day, I do both. I've got my hardscape contracting business and my staff I see them dealing with rhododendrons and Monday to Friday nine to five and then I go to restaurants and I see the poor staff working at night and they've got burn marks all over their arms. And I really believe that we undervalue the restaurant industry in our it, teachers, nurses, cooks servers, I think they're undervalued. But getting back to your question, I went off, I got my degree at UBC, I had a first good teacher of my life kept college Bob Verner. Anyway, he introduced me to the passion for math, I finished my degree at UBC, went off in the world and started my landscaping company. When my when my daughter was born, there was a necessity piece. When I got my first daughter was born 24 years ago now looked at myself and said, geez, what are you going to do? I said, Well, you build gardens, and I carried on with it with really strong encouragement from my mum. Yeah, you can do anything you want. And I was always around the bakery. I always have been, yeah, about seven or eight years ago, the bakery was flooded. And I had to jump in and help out a lot during those trying times. And then my mom's health was deteriorating, I could really notice it had to jump in and help out or domain up via Sabir Allen pipe company anymore, because it was really my mom. Right?

GLO 7:22
Okay. How did she get started in the pie business? Is that something that always made well, or,

BRAD 7:28
Gloria, this conversation that we had you mentioned out of necessity, and I don't know if you've read any biographies or any articles about my mom, but that's her main catch. People have this idea of my mom and save rail and pie company, but we grew up dirt poor and moving around, often moving from North Vancouver Bowen Island. We actually lived in what is now the museum in snug Cove on Bowen Island. It was government housing back then. It was definitely born out of necessity. She says it all the time. She had an opportunity back in the early 80s. On Bowen Island, there was a little bakery they made Bowen bread, which is the Irish soda bread. She started working there and she was definitely an entrepreneur herself. started selling cinnamon buns up Cypress mountain I remember we had no money but I had a ski pass for cycad. Yeah, she got me an annual pass and a grateful GoreTex jacket through her a slim cinnamon buns.

GLO 8:26
Wow, that's amazing. So she started out in bread that really it was bread and then cinnamon buns.

BRAD 8:30
Yeah, and pies, I guess. As a young boy in the 70s in the early 80s. It was tofu and fried onions. She was a hippie and we were eating tofu and fried onions and there was no baking in the house. None whatsoever.

GLO 8:45
That is funny. Brad and I had a chance to talk before we really have a lot of similarities. Actually. I joke that my mother was a hippie and an Asian woman's body. Because we didn't eat rice. We ate things like tofu. bolgar. I mean, no one had heard of but what's bolgar? No, no and heard of that before? We had all kinds of stuff like that. But we didn't eat white rice.

GLO 9:09
Like we should have eaten.

BRAD 9:11
I do I do.

GLO 9:15
Anyway, but yes, no baking in our house. Although my mum did used to make pound cake that she learned to make in England. That was really good. Getting back to you. This is about you. What a great story. Okay, so your mum started hustling. When did she decide to go on her own?

BRAD 9:30
She was always working on her own and I was I Well, okay. Oh, I see. It's kind of interesting. It's not so much that she was very good at baking. Okay, very hardworking, very tenacious, believed in really good quality, quality ingredients. But she was from day one. I don't remember her having a job as a baker but she would kind of supply maybe she worked for a couple of weeks for the bowl and bakery and got that soda bread recipe of the bowl and bread in the 80s we worked in Dundarave under Capers the bakery in that building where keepers originated,

GLO 10:03
I remember that

BRAD 10:04
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's funny, funny stories from the whole journey as we would supply keepers with baked goods and breads, but we were savory Island pie company back then. And then of course, Russell, the owner of keepers at the time, it seemed to be a reoccurring story kicked us out, and I remember so he wanted to space weed. My mom's boyfriend at the time designed a beautiful bakery space. It was stunning. As soon as we built it out, it kicked us out. And so my mom go on strike and I remember I stood on the legend. The other bakers were in our space and they were passing the muffins out the window because my mom barricaded the door. And she had me standing on the ledge and I had to barricade the window so they couldn't pass the baked goods out the window.

GLO 10:49
That's amazing. So I'm just saying just to set up shop down the street then because it's not so far away is that

BRAD 10:54
she was in many locations in West van Blau, okay. But Kat for a while. That was an amazing location. She was wholesaling to Cyprus and stones out of black cat which is on Marine Drive. And back then she used to sleep on top of the walk in coolers there, I'd bring her food at night and all that stuff.

GLO 11:12
Your mom is tenacious. She's amazing. Actually, being an entrepreneur,

BRAD 11:15
remember she had these wholesale accounts with Cypress and storms. People started knocking on the door because she had a little oven there. And I'll never forget, we didn't know how to take money. And so we cleaned a five gallon pail that was full of honey, we you know, we emptied it out, cleaned it out. Yep. And that five gallon pail was our till. And so the customers would grab a muffin make some change for themselves, or however we did. It was remember the end of the day, it was all my mom's money. She probably that was probably the most profitable time for my mom being

GLO 11:51
very little overhead. Ever since

BRAD 11:56
then, it's been a it's been a real challenge. I was think small business and then you get to medium sized business. And now we have 35 employees and our payroll is a million dollars a year and our rents last month and blah, blah, blah. She was very, very tenacious, very hard working. She definitely liked serving the community as well. Wow, amazing part of the community. And she had a very good palate. She had amazing taste buds. She always knew what tastes good and

GLO 12:23
okay. Yeah, that was back in a time where it was all original wasn't that there was no internet, no recipes to look up.

BRAD 12:31
The recipes are all like from aunts and grandmas. Yeah, definitely not none of that stuff. And we're still using the same recipes today. And I keep on trying to introduce new recipes, and I get so much such a hard time everybody. So you can't change anything. You

BRAD 12:43
can't change a thing. But those recipes. Yeah, it's a lot easier now with the internet to find amazing recipes. And

GLO 12:49
yes, yes, no, but she already had them. So I remember probably among the first times I went to Savary Island pie. There used to be this big table in the middle. Like you know, when you came in, there's a big table and that's where you can see people making pies right there. And then yeah, piles of apples. Can I ask how many apples do you put in that pie? I swear a dozen at least.

BRAD 13:15
The pies are about two and a half three pounds. And it's only two pounds of apples, where we sourcing biodynamic, organic, the tastiest, juiciest apples, and then we peel them by hand and slice them by hand. Yes,

GLO 13:28
I've noticed that. Yeah, it's a lot of work. It's a lot of hard work that goes into those pies. But gosh, they're worth it. They are so good.

BRAD 13:37
Thank you.

GLO 13:38
How about the apples? Do you guys have a particular coffee? I don't know. Is this a trade secret? Do people over there certainly baking apples that people will you know, because we have so many apples in BC, right? We're really like an apple growing region.

BRAD 13:50
bakers will often tell you it's like Granny Smith, or this or that what we've always done, since I've taken over, it's not particularly the type of apple. It's what's in season. what's available because we're making fresh apple pie all year round. Yeah, that's right, the local in season. So typically, we've been using a lot of Fuji. And because we found an amazing local biodynamic grower of Fuji apples, it might seem odd odd to use them, but his fujis I mean, they're crisp, they need to be crisp. And they have a ton of flavor and a lot of juice. And his Fuji is actually By the way, he grows them the 40 times the amount of nutrients in his fujis than other apples on the market. So all that stuff into it. And we can't always get his fujis there. You know, it's when they're in season.


BRAD 14:42
Sometimes we use Gala. So we don't have a specific Apple that we use. There's no trade secret. Lots of apples work. They definitely have to be crisp, and they definitely have to be good quality apples.

GLO 14:54
I'm not surprised that you say that because if I were to say something about apple pie We'd say it was very Apple forward. Like it just tastes like an apple like a fresh crispy see Apple that's baked in the pie and it's not mushy. It wasn't like overcooked, it wasn't cooked for, you know, it was nothing like that it

BRAD 15:13
just sort of wrapped in a pie. It's really perfect and so good. That's nice. GLORIA because apples a funny flavor. People often say Apple doesn't have a flavor, like a lot of the apple flavor out there is chemical, right? Like Apple candy. It's kind of like what does that taste like? Yeah, yeah,

GLO 15:31
I get what you mean.

Unknown Speaker 15:33
we peel and slice in real time. So we peel and slice and then we mix and then we pay. And then we do it 365 days a year.

Unknown Speaker 15:43
It's amazing. Well, and I noticed now that have you taken over the space next to you that it was a butcher shop before to store your pies, because you just sell so many of them.

Unknown Speaker 15:54
We took that over the woman that owned the British butcher approached me and she really wanted out all the problems with flooding in that I kind of record we were losing, I kind of recognized that we were losing the warehouse space behind us. It had new owners and I kind of anticipated that we were going to lose our warehouse space that actually takes a lot of space to create, do what we do in that little tiny space there. I took it over. And then sure enough, we didn't get kicked out of the warehouse space behind us. During COVID. It was really useful because it allowed us to provide social distancing for our staff. I've also been working really really really hard on homemade ice cream gloriana Yes,

GLO 16:34
I noticed that Yeah. What's the ice cream about? Did people always ask for it with the pies are you just wanted to try a new product does it

BRAD 16:42
glory when I said an opening in Tofino and I've been on this for two and a half years now. I did a lot of research and development in Tofino at wolf in the fog, all the local restaurants to pizzerias. I felt that I had to step up my game. It's really good food out here in Tofino the food culture is right up there. I always thought we had the best pie in town, but never had the best ice cream. So I thought it was kind of low hanging fruit, we should really be making our own ice cream with style or game. So I invested a ton of money in ice cream equipment, and it's been a real journey. It's been one year since I launched my ice cream because it was Pi Day when we launched our first ice cream. Of course, that's exactly when COVID hit a sambit handicap because my wife won't let me put any ingredients in my ice cream, except for the four basic ingredients. So I'm not allowed to use wire gum xantham gum and go on and on about ice cream. What's out there on the market. But our ice cream has only four ingredients.

GLO 17:44
Wow. Okay, Wow, amazing. So it's whole ingredients. Okay, and which is honestly right along the lines with your pie, right?

BRAD 17:51
It's just all natural. It's cream, egg yolks, organic cane sugar, and skim milk powder. Those are four ingredients and other flavors are all made in house fresh every day too. We make all flavors of chocolate and everything. And our vanilla is our vanilla beans. That's all we use. We just scrape the seeds out of the vanilla beans we import from Madagascar and Wow, nice cream. After a year. We've got a really we've been working on columns, our own waffle cones, and we're really we're really excited to maybe open up our next door and say brown pipe company with our with our ice cream. When our restaurant does open up again. Yes, people sit down with a warm slice of apple pie. We can pair it with our homemade vanilla ice cream.

GLO 18:36
You're gonna need more space for people to set because if you are offering pie and ice cream, like a pie shop and ice cream shop, I mean, you're like the, you know, place in town to go to.

BRAD 18:45
Yeah, I've actually been working with the municipality and the mayor of West Vancouver and we had to meet on the restaurant. Hopefully there's going to be more and more of that in Ambleside.

GLO 18:55
Now you touched a bit on your second location. So for anyone who's listening from BC he's opening a second location in Tofino. So are you opening ice cream and pie there as well.

BRAD 19:07
One of my favorite go to words is dynamic, which worked very well for me during COVID. And I've had this space for two and a half years and we believe we're opening very, very very, very soon. Okay, a week or so. But we'll have it posted on Instagram when we finally do open but we've got to we're down on the water with the big outdoor patio. It'll be savory Island number two, the offering will be very very similar pie homemade ice cream for sure. Our breads or muffins are scones with COVID it's sort of are we going to have indoor dining, probably a little bit that this This place is very conducive. We have a little bit of space here more space in West Bend the problem with West Bend and COVID. If anybody knows our location in West fat, West Vancouver, it's like the sardine sardines in there and during COVID it was very problematic and we had to close our doors because of that

GLO 19:59
since you can't Step back into the business a few years ago, in a way right so that your mom could retire if she retired.

BRAD 20:06
She's definitely retired. Yes.

GLO 20:07
How have your landscaping skills been brought in? Do you was was it handy to sort of have run your own business already? Before you stepped into your mom's? Yeah,

BRAD 20:17
well, going back to my math degree, a math degree is actually you're actually aren't a calculator. You use calculators, but having a math degree is I'm problem solving. I've had a lot of problems being an entrepreneur in my life, and I've been able to solve them. And I think having a math degree really helped. During COVID. I've got 35 employees, they're my liability. During COVID. It was so fast. Things were changing every single day. Definitely, by the week, we are getting different announcements from the government from that department. I found it really an amazing time. He was no longer he couldn't go to Google to solve your problem. You had to have it in yet. You know, I'm 50 years old now. I just turned 50. I've got a bit of experience. Hopefully, I think, a little bit of wisdom. It was refreshing that, you know, you couldn't turn to Google, I like to get on your feet. And the people that survived had to you know, you let's not rely on the computer too much. Because during COVID you there were no answers on the computer. You had to have it within you and

GLO 21:20
well, common sense, right. It's a good experience. Yeah, yeah. and problem solving, problem solving ability

BRAD 21:27
to Okay, great. Well, I'm glad you guys were able to weather that because it definitely wasn't easy, I think for a lot of businesses around here. Although for some businesses, the takeout factor alone seem to help to

BRAD 21:41
very, very fortunate. Yeah,

GLO 21:42
you guys are busy, for sure.

BRAD 21:44
I see so many silver linings. I was very fortunate when COVID first happened, and I switched back on my delivery service in charge, didn't charge any fees for delivery. And I was busy. And I thought everything for those first three weeks was me and my PI van were all alone on the road and Vancouver. It was really fascinating.

GLO 22:02
Right? Wow. Okay, but people were still calling me for pie, they probably wanted more pie during

BRAD 22:08
the delivery at that time I was delivering And anyway, I just to say I've seen a lot during COVID. A lot of silver linings, a lot of happiness and gratefulness. I'm very fortunate, for example, that we were able to stay open because of our physical situation, I could lay my windows there. I did have my web page set up already. I did have delivery systems and procedures in place, which I switched back on, I realized that if I was in the middle of a mall, I wouldn't have the same experience at all. So very fortunate and very grateful.

GLO 22:43
It looks like it's going to be a bit more behind us now. But it will be something for the books, right? The experience of weathering What happened?

BRAD 22:51
My mum always she taught me a lot of things growing up. But a few things that stand out is like she would always tell me you don't judge a man when he's up. You judge a man when he's down. And she would often say pull up your boots bread, and that's how she raised me. GLORIA It wasn't easy. I didn't have a day off for the first five or six months I was there 14 hours a day. But it was exhilarating. It was thrilling. It ended up being actually profitable. So that's what entrepreneurship is all about.

BRAD 23:20
That's right now is the day, seven days a week.

BRAD 23:22
I think, hopefully, hopefully profitability. No, no, I

GLO 23:26
like that. For the entrepreneurs that are listening. It's true, right? You just have to get on with things solve problems. And like your mom says pull on your boots, you have to get to it right. And

BRAD 23:37
I actually gloria, I actually found that pre COVID we were really struggling to get staff. Again, it comes down to money, unfortunately. And if people are only going to pay X number of dollars for a meal in a restaurant, we can only pay X number of dollars for wages for the industry. During COVID, the staff that's stuck it out the ones that stayed with us, one of the big takeaways is it's not really that much fun sitting at home doing nothing. I'm getting more productivity out of my staff people are kind of anyway, the whole

BRAD 24:12
happy to work, like happy to have something to do

BRAD 24:14
happy to work and pre COVID in Vancouver people seem not to be not happy at all to come to work. And so that's been amazing for me as an employer. And so our productivity is up. Oh, good. COVID

GLO 24:29
What kind of employees do you look for? Are they bakers by trade? Or do you teach them how to do what you guys are doing over there how to make the bread how to make the pies.

BRAD 24:39
We've rarely hired trained bakers it's always been very difficult here to find. We've typically hired great people that are passionate and we teach them our trade of making muffins and pies and scons they enjoy that being part of a community very hard for us to get dishwashers and managers. That's been the hard part for us.

GLO 25:01
Right? Well, because all the fun is happening at that table. Right? It's all in that huge table.

BRAD 25:06
Yeah. So that will often again, the employer and the employee and my wife and I, and yeah, we'll have this. It's like, you know what, let's just slow everything down. And let's work at the pie table. Yes, running the business is very difficult.

GLO 25:22
I've heard that when you are going through hard times, or you know anything emotionally, that the best way to work it out is to work in a business. Like to start a business work in a business just kind of focus on the different things you're

BRAD 25:36
occupied might be like, climbing Mount Everest or skydiving, all these things. I guess the reason we do them is to get our mind off of other things. I think the trick is really finding balance and having hobbies, which one day I hope I don't have time to besides driving the delivery truck,

BRAD 24:55
one of the moves to Tofino I'm 50 years old now. And I do imagine that I'll be surfing and paddling, having time to do all these amazing important things other than being an entrepreneur, entrepreneur. Yeah,

GLO 26:07
that's okay. You have another 50 years to learn how to do all those other things. Yeah. Okay, I'm sure people ask you this but butter or lard for the pie crust, and cold or room temperature that's ask you.

BRAD 26:21
I would love to go back to lard and we were actually looking on Vancouver Island at some organic farms. And we want to play around with some lard for meat pies, especially, it's very hard. satisfy everybody with ingredients. And of course, people think lard is has a bad connotation. But we use butter. Our pastry is currently butter and vegetable shortening. We try to use as much butter as we can. But the vegetable shortening and butter we combine the two, the temperature, the cooler the better. It's not always the better. Okay, we need to achieve though and we just work really, really fast. Yeah,

GLO 26:56
right, right. What's your best selling pie?

BRAD 26:59
Apple Apple pie?

GLO 27:01
So of course you have to make ice cream because Apple Pie has to be with ice cream, don't you think? Or do you eat it plain?

BRAD 27:06
I don't eat our pie growing up with it. I remember my mom. My wife makes a tart pet pen. I can't pronounce it properly. Okay. French pastry with the upside a third pet pen. I remember about 10 years ago my mom and my daughters and my wife and my mom was at the dinner table and like we ate the tart pet tension. My mum was irate as she often is. And she said eat your wife's pie but you don't eat mine. Growing up in the industry, I just it was too much around me and I've never had a sweet tooth so I do what you have never had a sweet tooth so I like her. I've always my favorite item at the bakery is the Irish soda bread.

GLO 27:46
I was just gonna ask that oh and that is so good.

BRAD 27:49
It's so so easy to me can such a simple recipe I really love it.

GLO 27:52
What's the best selling product? Is it pie or is it bread because you have just as much bread I'd say right you have a lot of different kinds of

BRAD 27:59
pies definitely the best selling products during COVID are protein pies or meat pies have just doubled it's gone crazy. Wow. Yes, we created a taken bake pie now a lot of frozen products

GLO 28:11
that makes sense for people to bring home and yeah, especially if they're taking out

BRAD 28:14
Yeah, so getting back to pie and ice cream. My love of serving people whenever I'm working the front and that's my favorite station and I did it a lot back in the 80s and I still do it today when I'm back in the shop and stuff I don't know how to use the till but I do talk to the customers a lot. I would never let a customer really get away without having ice cream. So what they say is they come in what kind of pie and I say well you should have the raspberry rhubarb is fresh and do you want ice cream? And they say oh no and I say yeah, you really do need to have I get them to have a seat. I said give me 10 minutes I take the slice of pie and I warm it up in the oven and we don't use the microwave so it takes a long time. And I serve it with ice cream and at the end of the experience they thank me I do agree with you GLORIA And I have eaten all of our pies and I eat them constantly.

GLO 29:02
They have to

BRAD 29:05
but I really, really agree with you. It's the my favorite plain raspberry pie one to one ratio pie in vanilla ice cream. Okay, warm raspberry pie and vanilla ice cream. There's my favorite right there.

GLO 29:19
Okay, I'm already thinking you know, because over the break, we may spend a few days at Whistler so I'm definitely stopping and but but the thing is I can't I justify a third pie bread because we already get the whole lemon buttermilk and Apple Can I tell you either raspberry

GLO 29:38
or yet what I really really read because your buys are huge. They're huge. The taken big pie that we've really been working hard on we do mostly in the six inch because they they're a lot easier to bait you don't know. You don't have to thought them you just slam them in the oven from Frozen. I recommend if you're going to Whistler you can grab the taken bake pies, okay, they'll they'll be fine in your car. There. frozen solid good, right? You get there. You can bake six inch pies and then your whole room where? Yeah, it smells like you're baking the pie yourself. It's a phenomenal experience. Really?

GLO 30:11
Okay. Okay, I might take a frozen one. I mean, you're assuming that I'm going to wait to eat it really, we just honestly we just get forks. They're like, Oh, do you need anything else? We're like, yeah, cutlery edit. You know, I spent so much time with you. I just wanted to ask a couple more fun questions. Really? Have you ever made pies for weddings? Oh, yeah. We need 500 pies. Oh, so much. Really? Okay.

BRAD 30:32
Pre COVID. Our wedding business was really getting really big. And of course, because of COVID we haven't done any any weddings for the last year. It kind of reminded Boyle boy the weddings and what we do, Gloria, we're crazy. So what we do me and my, my sister in law, these women come in these brides villas come in, and they say, okay, six months prior, and they say we want we want to do pies, and we want to play station and No. Okay, like great. I said, Well tell them what you have to do. You have to trust us. And if you're serving the pie at 8pm, we're going to arrive at 730. And the pies are going to be hot. And they're like, No, we need them the day before. And we're like, well, we'll do that. But we don't like to do that. So what we do is we we bake the pies at 6pm. We take them straight out of the oven into my van and on a rack that I built drive to Stanley Park or UBC or wherever and we come in with hot pie. Everyone's nervous all the wedding planners are nervous, nervous, nervous,

GLO 31:29
right? That Are you going to show up?

BRAD 31:31
Are we going to show up we always do is traffic on the bridges can be quite scary. It's we've always made it look funny avoid the experience of having a wedding and having hot fresh pie. And so the wedding planners are starting to you know, get used to it and actually enjoying the service. But that's what we like to do. We like to do it fresh, but it's stressful.

GLO 31:52
And Brad, you take on a lot honestly, the fact that you're insisting on hot delivering hot pie as opposed to no you get it the day before and that's it because I don't want to deal with the stress.

BRAD 32:03
I'm actually trying to change some of my waves.

GLO 32:07
Righty good timing. Yeah, good time. My last question really to a lot of people are Do you have a favorite business?

BRAD 32:15
I could go on and on. I really hope my local businesses that I love. I raised my daughters in East Vancouver and I like this restaurant called ben de does on commercial drive and it's a vegetarian Mexican. You feel really good when you eat their food is kind of the opposite. I don't want to put cactus club under the bus. I find that we and mom and pops like Bandidos are kind of the opposite of okay. I feel very comfortable in little mom and pops. People are very, if you read the reviews of Bandidos, for example, they're all terrible. All the waitresses are mean, everybody is angry. That's my comfort zone. Really, and I find I find those waitresses or waiters, they may not be good to look at. And they are but it's a very subjective, I find them very real. And I like you like real people. I like real and I like real food. And I find the older you get, the more your stomach stomach will search out real food because it's about how you feel as well as how it tastes. I can go on for a week, all the businesses that I support.

GLO 33:23
Thank you. You've shared a lot. I really appreciate your time and I've loved your story. And I wish that I had been recording for the first 15 minutes when we were talking.

BRAD 33:31
I did tell you to do that. Or I was in a play in a school called Windsor house in North Vancouver was called rape of the lock. I was the only boy in the play. I froze. I got stage fright. I'll never forget. And now I'm 50 I think I'm getting I'm finally getting over it. I wish that you never told me you that you were recording because I do much better when I'm not being observed.

GLO 33:55
I see. I see. Okay, okay. You've done great either way. So thank you. I'm really mostly I appreciate your time and your story, and I hope everyone else does too. Okay,

BRAD 34:06
bye, GLORIA Thank you.

GLO 34:13
Our interview is what my opinion is of savory Island pie itself, perfectly baked golden crust. Delicious, Li homey, comfortable, easy to enjoy, and there was lots to share. By the way, savory Island now makes homemade ice cream too. I've tried several flavors. And what I can tell you is that there's nothing artificial in them. It tastes very real. And it reminds me of the ice cream of back in the 70s when I was growing up, which I found to be creamy and more flavorful than sweet. It's very good.

I'm so grateful that I get to meet all these great people behind my favorite local businesses and learn about them too. I hope you enjoy what I do. So I want to tell you that I just joined buy me a coffee. You can go there or you can go to my website. ww Glo Says calm and find the tab. It's in the upper right hand corner. It's a simple way to fund me in this creative work, or you can leave me a nice comment. I'd love that too. If you're a local business, I'll give you a shout out on the show, or we can even think about a collab. But most importantly, follow me at Glo Says on Apple or Spotify and I'll talk to you soon

Transcribed by https://otter.ai