Crystal Wise
If there’s no one at the window, look down. The buzzer is right by your foot. Give it a gentle kick, and someone will magically appear at the window, ready to take your order.
Megan Wilkes and Mary Sparks have, seemingly, thought of everything when it comes to opening a pie shop amid a pandemic, right down to installing a no-touch buzzer designed to alert employees that hungry pie-lovers have arrived. The first Fort Worth location of their Emporium Pies, found in Winton and Waits’ old spot on South Main, won’t even have inside seating until later this year, and that’s only if the pandemic continues its downward trend.
“We knew opening a location at a time like this would be tricky,” Wilkes says. “So, we’re trying to be as conscientious as possible. At the same time, we’re super-anxious to get Fort Worth open.”
The two came up with an excellent COVID-friendly game plan to get their much-anticipated Fort Worth debut off the ground: Open the restaurant for window service only for now, then the dining room later this year as, hopefully, the pandemic continues to taper.
Ever since the original Emporium Pies opened in Dallas’ Bishop Arts district a decade ago (subsequent locations have opened in Deep Ellum and McKinney), the two have been besieged with requests to open a Fort Worth store.
Many of their pie-hard fans are from Fort Worth and can recite Emporium’s seven-pie menu by heart: The Drunken Nut, a bourbon pecan pie; Smooth Operator, French silk chocolate with a salty pretzel crust; In the Limelight, a key lime pie; Dr. Love, a lipstick-red red velvet; Blue Steel, a blueberry pie; Cloud 9, a mix of butterscotch custard, salted caramel, and brown sugar meringue; and Lord of the Pies, a deep-dish apple pie with cinnamon streusel. All are made by hand.
There’s already great pie in Fort Worth — Carshon’s Deli, Swiss Pastry Shop, Paris Coffee Shop, we’re looking at you. But Emporium’s home-y, laid-back vibe is almost as important as its slices. Although it’s not located in a creaky Victorian bungalow, like the original store in Bishop Arts, the Fort Worth location will have a certain feels-like-home atmosphere to it, Wilkes says.
“For us, it’s more than about the pies,” Wilkes says. “We try to create an experience — that warm, fuzzy feeling of walking into your grandmother’s house and getting a great dessert.”
Wilkes and Sparks met in Dallas. Wilkes had a mind for business; Sparks a way with an oven. They teamed up and purchased an oven Sparks used when she was working at a bakery in Tyler. Eventually, they set up shop in Bishop Arts, not far from Eno’s, where Mary once waited tables.
“We weren’t really sure how well we’d do,” Wilkes says. “We talked about if pies didn’t work out, we could add cinnamon rolls and cookies. Mary makes the best cookies. The world doesn’t know what it’s missing.”
Emporium Pies, 411 S. Main St., emporiumpies.com
