For those who have been in Long Beach for over a decade, Laurie’s Pie Bar is far more than a dessert shop in Downtown, celebrating its 10th year of operating in a brick-and-mortar location. It’s a stalwart Long Beach brand, having started as a cottage kitchen operation before becoming a regular pop-up at the much-missed MADE in Long Beach shop. And then, in February of 2016, signed the lease for the space we now know as Laurie’s Pie Bar.
After all, there are businesses that arrive with investor backing, polished branding, and carefully modeled business plans. Then there are businesses like Laurie’s Pie Bar. Born out of necessity. Sustained by pure feminine grit. And, ultimately, happily embraced by the entire city.
“It’s been an incredibly wild journey,” Laurie said, reminiscing about when she branded the Pie Bar as that of a proudly single 1960s mom churning out sweets in her humble kitchen. “And I think one of the most humbling parts is that there are still customers coming that were among my first when I was hand delivering pies right when they came out of the oven… This is as much a celebration of them as it is my business.”
Laid off with no plan: How Laurie’s Pie Bar was birthed out of struggle and a fierce desire for independence.
When Laurie Gray was unexpectedly laid off in the fall of 2014 after nearly three decades in corporate banking and finance, she wasn’t looking to become one of Downtown Long Beach’s most recognizable food entrepreneurs. She was a single mother of two teenagers who suddenly needed to find a way to pay the bills.
“I had just turned 50 and was planning on that being my career till retirement,” Laurie recalled. “They came in basically and said, ‘We’re restructuring, today’s your last day.’ … I was shocked. I’d been working since I was 16 years old.”
With the holidays approaching, she turned to the one skill that had been with her since childhood: making amazing pies. That decision would ultimately become Laurie’s Pie Bar, which this month celebrates a decade in its Downtown Long Beach home—and more than ten years since Laurie first started selling pies out of her apartment’s tiny, two-pies-only-at-a-time oven.
Laurie’s Pie Bar: From a Washington farm to a Long Beach kitchen
Laurie’s pie education didn’t come from culinary school. It came from a farm and her mom. Growing up on ten acres near Tacoma, Washington, her stay-at-home mother taught her to bake using fruit grown on their own property. (This explains why the Pie Bar has marionberry pie, a rarity in California but a staple in Oregon and Washington; she has the berries delivered weekly.)
“My mom taught me how to bake when I was little,” she said. “We grew all our own fruits and vegetables… I always had that love of baking. And, now, looking back as a working mom who really didn’t get to cook for my kids in the capacity my own mom did, there’s this sweetness to my business becoming what it did. I got to cook for a whole new generation of pie lovers.”
Those family recipes became the foundation of her business. Armed with little more than a Facebook page made in 2014, homemade flyers, and business cards, Laurie began selling whole pies directly from her apartment. The timing proved perfect. Social media was still remarkably organic, word spread rapidly, and customers began placing holiday orders faster than she could bake them.
She remembers pulling just two pies at a time from her home oven before personally delivering them to customers’ doorsteps. Two pies out, delivery, two pies in, repeat.
Cottage kitchen, commercial kitchen, then…
Only a few months later, Laurie became a licensed cottage food operator—at a time when California’s cottage food laws were still relatively new. The permit allowed her to sell fruit pies, but cream pies, custard pies and anything containing eggs remained prohibited.
“I wanted to do Key lime pie,” Laurie said. “That’s a really old family recipe. I wanted to do chocolate pie and all these other pies.”
So she rented commercial kitchen space in Huntington Beach. Suddenly she wasn’t simply baking. She was shopping for ingredients, loading commercial ovens, making deliveries, answering customers, handling bookkeeping and eventually hiring her first employee—all while building an entirely new career from scratch.
…finding a home at MADE for Laurie’s Pie Bar.
The next turning point came with the opening of MADE by Millworks in Downtown Long Beach. Laurie remembers literally knocking on the still-closed front door before the marketplace had even opened. Inside, she found a community of emerging local makers that included names like Long Beach Creamery, Black Ring Coffee and Romeo Chocolates.
“It was a great place to launch your brand,” Laurie said, who created elaborate displays for her baked goods. “Long Beach embraced local entrepreneurs in a way few cities do. The community is definitely what made us successful… They just supported it so well.”
The space hosted her famed pie shots. The ability to order. And, of course, became the birthplace of her legendary Cutie Pies.
The invention that took Pie Bar to new heights: Cutie Pies
Holiday pie sales had been strong. January wasn’t. Wondering how to convince health-conscious customers to keep buying pie after New Year’s, Laurie borrowed inspiration from cupcakes served in mason jars. Her solution became the now-famous Cutie Pie.
“I’d seen cupcakes done in a jar,” she said. “I’m gonna do pie in a jar.”
The first flavor? Key lime. More than a decade later, it’s still among Laurie’s best sellers. The miniature desserts became not just a menu item but a signature product that helped distinguish Laurie’s Pie Bar from traditional bakeries throughout Southern California.
Betting on pie before pie became trendy
Today, specialty dessert concepts are commonplace. In 2015, they weren’t. Laurie intentionally rejected the idea of opening another general bakery, choosing to be niche with her one true love: pie.
“I knew I wanted to be just all pie,” she said. “There’s a lot of amazing bakeries out there, but I just wanted to do all things pie. Pie is the ultimate comfort dessert. People have so many family memories tied to pie—and I knew that could work out in a business sense.”
That focus proved prophetic. Over the last decade, national pie-focused brands expanded aggressively before many contracted just as quickly. Even Long Beach saw dedicated pie concepts—including Pie Hole and, most recently, Republic of Pie—eventually disappear from the local landscape after struggling to establish lasting footholds.
What makes Laurie’s Pie Bar so damn good…
Rather than chasing trends, Laurie’s doubled down on nostalgia, craftsmanship, and consistency. And that included the science—and obsession—behind the crust. Laurie speaks about pie crust the way winemakers discuss terroir.
“The biggest mistake people make is they overwork the dough,” she explained. “Cold butter. Cold water. Touch it as little as possible. You want to see chunks of butter when it goes in the oven.. That butter then melts, leaving the air pockets behind. That’s how you get the flakiness.”
Ten years later, the menu has become its own institution: Roughly 50 rotating flavors while experimenting with dozens more that never made the permanent menu.
Some have become local icons: The tart Key lime pie. The seasonal Bourbon Pecan pie. Cherry Amaretto. Lemon Lavender. Ube Coconut Cheesecake. Crème brûlée pie—a suggestion from her head baker, Tracy, that Laurie initially dismissed. The Dutch Apple pie made with Granny Smith apples, generous spice and a splash of apple brandy. And, of course, marionberry.
Business experience mattered as much as baking
Laurie is quick to admit she entered the food industry without restaurant experience. But the thing she did have that most passion projects do not? Nearly thirty years of corporate management. Finance. Marketing. Operations. That experience allowed her to focus less on baking every pie herself and more on building a sustainable company.
“I had to love baking,” she said. “I knew how to make pies. But my background was in business—so I came with knowledge from the beginning that many have to accrue through mistakes.”
That business acumen—paired with hiring talented bakers rather than insisting on formal culinary credentials—helped Laurie’s navigate the difficult years that cause so many independent restaurants to close. With that, she understands that quality alone isn’t enough.
“You can have a great product—and still not make it,” Laurie said. “I wasn’t just expecting success to happen; I had to fight. And I wasn’t gonna give up.”
Navigating the pandemic: Laurie’s Pie Bar grows up with harsh lessons.
Surely, every obstacle became another problem to solve. And it was perhaps that precise mindset that carried Laurie’s through the pandemic. Sales remained surprisingly strong as customers sought comfort food and intentionally supported local businesses, but emotionally, it was the hardest stretch of Laurie’s career.
“The fear of the unknown was the hardest,” Laurie said. “Especially after five years of just going up. My head baker, Tracy, contracted COVID-19—and was hit very, very hard. And, definitely the most painful thing, her father was hospitalized after contracting the virus and never returned home… Those were the hardest years of my life.”
Emerging from that experience gave Laurie an even deeper appreciation for the community that carried her business through its darkest chapter. It strengthened her resolve not simply to survive, but to build something enduring. Ten years in, the focus is no longer just on making great pie. That will always be there. Rather, the focus is on honoring the resilience that made the business and the people behind it strong enough to imagine the next decade.
Laurie’s Pie Bar: The next ten years…
As Laurie’s Pie Bar celebrates ten years on Pine Avenue, Laurie isn’t slowing down. Instead, she’s looking beyond Downtown Long Beach. The catering business continues expanding through weddings, corporate clients and large-scale events—including recent work for Amazon and Universal Studios.
“We’re continuing to grow and expand our catering division,” Laurie said. “And also looking to open up additional shops. But in the end, I’m just so grateful every day for every person that’s walked through that door over the ten years. Long Beach built us.”
The formal party…
Laurie’s Pie Bar will celebrate its 10th anniversary on Saturday, July 11, with an afternoon and evening of family-friendly festivities commemorating a decade in Downtown Long Beach.
The celebration will feature activities, contests, food and special experiences throughout the day, including:
2PM– 3:30PM
- Photo booth
- Kids coloring station
- “Pin the Slice on the Pie” game
3:30PM– 4:30PM
- Dog Red Carpet Walk
4PM– 8PM
- Glizzy Street Dogs food vendor
5PM
- Pie Eating Contest
6:30PM–8PM
- Paint, Pie & Sip experience
Free tickets for select activities are available now through Eventbrite.
Pie Bar is located at 450 Pine Ave.
