The scent of fresh pies wafted through the air, drawing a long line of customers to Mom’s Apple Pie in Leesburg the day before Thanksgiving.
Bakery owner Avis Renshaw said demand for the holiday treats gets bigger every year.
“We start planning this in September,” Renshaw said. “Thanksgiving is twice as busy for us than Christmas, and everybody thinks Christmas would be busy. But with Christmas you have different cultural desserts, and you have different religious desserts. And not everybody is Christian for Christmas, and yet everybody is American, and everybody does Thanksgiving and that is what drives them out.”
Her crew has been busy making and freezing butter crust shells ahead of time. They worked around the clock, Renshaw said.
The bakery’s three locations in Leesburg, Round Hill and Occoquan all began using on online pick-up in an effort to mitigate traffic. Renshaw said they placed a trailer and farm crew in the Virginia Village shopping center to hand out pies ordered online.
Customers who ordered on-site had to wait in a line that reached into the parking lot. At the end, they could shop through an assortment of fresh-made pies.
While she recommends all of the bakery’s pies, she said apple crumb, pumpkin, and pecan are the top three customer choices every year.
“As fractious as our country is and as divided as they are politically, there is one thing everybody agrees on—and it is pie at Thanksgiving,” Renshaw said.
