Crystal Wise
About 10 years ago, Lindsey Lawing received the good news she’d been hoping for: She had been invited to sell her pies at the Crestline Farmer’s Market in Fort Worth. There was just one thing: She’d never made a pie before.
“The very first market, that’s when I baked my very first pies,” she says. “Six pies in 18 hours. I was so proud that first morning I set up there. I sold all six pies, and, man, I thought I had made it big. I often say I feel sorry for those six customers because I know they were probably the worst six pies I’ve ever made.”
A decade later, Lawing is now running her own pie shop, Sweet Lucy’s Pies, and after years of experimenting with and perfecting her recipes, selling out at farmers' markets and at other foodie events, and building her name and brand in Fort Worth food circles, it’s safe to say Lawing knows a thing or two about pie now.
Opened earlier this year on the Bluebonnet traffic circle, Sweet Lucy’s Pies is a tiny bakery — more storefront than a restaurant. It’s open by appointment throughout the week for people who call in or order online. On Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., pies are sold to the public.
Sweet Lucy’s menu changes seasonally. Current pie flavors include the Sweet Lucy Pie, a strawberry cream pie; malted milk chocolate; salted honey, Coffee Cream Dream Pie; Oh, Snap, Carrot’s Back, a sweet carrot pie; and a double-crusted strawberry pie.
Crystal Wise
Lawing lucked out finding this particular space: It’s the former home of Daddy Ray’s Famous Gingerbread, so it was already set up for a commercial kitchen. There’s not much of a seating area, though; most get their pies to go. “It’s perfect for what I want to do now,” she says. “It’s small inside, but when the weather’s nice, I’ll probably put out a few tables so people can eat there if they want.”
Family has always been an important factor in the decisions Lawing has made with her life, so it’s no surprise Sweet Lucy’s is connected to two important family members: her daughter, Lucy, for whom Lawing’s business and shop are named, and Lawing’s sister, Jodi Marie, who runs her own cookie business out of Sweet Lucy’s space called Fort Worth Cookie Gal.
“Our partnership goes back to the beginning of Sweet Lucy’s,” Lawing says of sis. “When I first launched Sweet Lucy’s, I was working at Reata, juggling single motherhood, trying to bake pies on the weekends. I quickly enlisted my sister’s help. We would often stay up all night baking pies, boxing, wrapping samples, and writing out labels. I would get a few hours of sleep and head to the market to sell. She would help me with Lucy while I set up at the markets. Those were long days, but looking back, it was so much fun.”
The sisters, who grew up in southeast Texas, have spent their lives traveling different paths, only to once again come together. Lawing, who at 36 is two years older than Marie, went away to college at Mary Hardin-Baylor to study biology and nursing while Marie finished high school. Lawing left school and moved to Fort Worth while Marie graduated and moved to Houston.
Not long after Lawing moved to Fort Worth, she landed a job at Reata. Not far behind was Marie, who followed her big sis to not only Fort Worth but to Reata, too, where both worked as servers.
“Neither one of us has had any formal culinary training, but we definitely understand the service industry,” Lawing says. “I think that’s one reason we are good at what we do. I never really had a passion for cooking and certainly was no baker by any means, but Jodi always had a knack for baking. It’s funny how I ended up being the pie-maker.”
Those seeds were planted when she ran across an article about a pie shop in Brooklyn called Four & Twenty Blackbirds. At the time, Lucy had just been born and Lawing, a single mother, was looking for ways to supplement what she was making at Reata.
“Pies, that was an idea,” she says. “I didn’t know how to make a pie and quite frankly very rarely ate pie, but I knew I could do it. I knew there were no other pie shops in Fort Worth at the time, and I went for it.”
Crystal Wise
She immersed herself in the world of the home cottage food industry and its many complications. To maneuver this prickly maze of rules and regulations, she took classes in her spare time, learning how to launch a home-based bakery.
Then came the hard part — learning how to bake pies. She had learned enough to wing it during her auspicious debut at the Crestline Farmer’s Market, but it’s taken her years and tears to perfect her recipes. Cues have come from several sources: Four & Twenty Blackbirds; her grandmother’s recipe book; and local farm-to-table restaurants. “I knew from the beginning that I wanted to partner with local farmers and producers for ingredients,” she says. “Knowing something was literally picked out of the ground yesterday and made into a pie today is super cool to me.”
In addition to locally sourced fruits and other fillings, she uses a Texas-milled flour when it’s available; the alternative is a high-quality unbleached flour. Her butter is high in fat and European. “I will never go back to basic butter again,” she says.
She won’t reveal the ingredients in her sublimely flaky crust, but it used to give her fits. “Crust, I knew the crust was going to set me apart,” she says. “It was hard and fussy. Should I use butter or shortening or both? Should I use water or vodka? In those early days, I would make one crust at a time and the hours were so long. But they kept getting better and better, and I knew I was onto something.”
Lawing’s mother and grandmother were always sources of support and inspiration. So was a least likely source: a customer. Lawing’s very first phone customer grew into a friend and mentor. “Her name was Renie Steves. From early on in our friendship, she saw the potential I had. She would invite me to her house to talk all things pie and recipes. I would bring her my latest pies, and she’d critique them. ‘A little more salt,’ she’d say. She was never afraid to [be honest], which helped me grow as a baker. Without her guidance, I don’t think I would have the same flaky crust that people seem to love.”
Wanting to spend more time with her daughter, Lawing took a leap of faith and quit Reata to focus on working full time at home. With help from two Reata employees, Russell Kirkpatrick and Gigi Howell, Lawing came up with a logo and social media presence. Lawing knew, however, it would be tough trying to sell pies for a living, so she networked, set up at farmers markets near and far, and mastered the art of social media.
As her momentum continued to build, along came the pandemic to cause her to doubt what she was doing.
“Everything came to a screeching halt,” she says. “I was going through some serious personal things and quite honestly didn’t think that I would keep doing Sweet Lucy’s. After some time off and some serious soul searching, I asked God to lead me, and that’s when things really took off for Sweet Lucy’s. We did our biggest year to date in 2020, and things have never been the same. I think I needed to hit rock bottom to get to where I am today.”
The pandemic also brought Lawing and her sister back together.
“Sweet Lucy’s began to grow, and my sister decided it wasn’t what she wanted to do,” she says. “It wasn’t until the pandemic hit that she started her cookie business. We started marketing together and eventually setting up shop together at the Clearfork Farmer’s Market. Working together again made sense, and we started helping each other grow our businesses.”
Finally, the sisters decided to take a shot at the brick-and-mortar route.
“When the opportunity for a brick-and-mortar presented itself, I knew that she would be a huge part of that,” Lawing says. “So here we are, baking the days away in our very own kitchen. It’s hard work — we often argue about silly things — but at the end of the day, I think we are right where we were always meant to be.”
Sweet Lucy’s Pies, 3520 Bluebonnet Circle, sweetlucyspies.com
