Armada pie company rises to the occasion

Accepting progress, maintaining standards are keys to success for Achatz Handmade.
Special to The Detroit News
Eric Pope

ARMADA -- Wendy Achatz used to consider it a good day when she sold a hundred pies at the Armada Flea Market. This year the Achatz Handmade Pie Co. made more than 20,000 pies the week before Christmas.
That kind of growth is impressive for a company that prides itself on baking pies the old-fashioned way with high-quality ingredients and no preservatives or additives. Those high standards make it harder to speed up the production process, but Achatz and her husband, David, continue to increase sales at the company they founded in 1993.
Revenues of $3.5 million in 2004 grew about 10 percent this year.
"I always knew it would be successful because of the way customers raved about the pies," Achatz said.
During 2005 the company opened stores in Sterling Heights and Shelby Township to go along with satellite bakeries in Troy and Oxford. The original bakery is a converted pole barn in an Armada apple orchard.
The company makes 50 pie flavors -- Michigan four-berry is the biggest seller -- and carries another 50 related products. Wholesaling accounts for 60 percent of revenues.
The key to growth in this traditional business is change, according to Achatz.
"I thrive on change, but change is the hardest thing to get people to go along with," she said.
One of the biggest hurdles was her reluctance to give up certain responsibilities. For years she prepared all the pie crusts -- injuring her shoulder in the process -- because she felt other people couldn't do it as well.
She finally turned that task over to other people and three years ago acquired a pie press that has eliminated about 90 percent of the labor.
Growing its own Northern Spy apples was part of the company's homemade image, but taking care of the orchard and storing the apples proved to be too time-consuming for the owners of a growing business. Now all the apples come from a supplier.
Using a supplier saves time and money, although the pie company has to pay extra to get apples without a chemical preservative that prevents the slices from turning brown.
That commitment to quality fits the business model of Texas-based Whole Foods Market, Achatz's biggest wholesale distributor. Mary Mesic, the assistant regional bakery coordinator for Whole Foods in Chicago, has watched the pie company make the adjustment to higher production levels.
"The quality and the taste of the product have stayed the same," Mesic said. "Our customers love it."
Achatz reads business books to find new ways to improve and expand her business. One of her recent favorites explained what the founders of premium ice cream maker Ben & Jerry's did when they reached the pie company's current revenue level.
"That's when they had to make some big changes," Achatz said. "It was leap or die."
After reading Jack Stack's "The Great Game of Business," the Achatzes introduced open-book management and profit-sharing this year. Now employees can see how well each department is controlling expenses.
"I try to get people to see the company from the owner's perspective," Achatz said.
That means getting employees to accept change and maintain the standards that have made the company successful.
Her New Year's resolution is to put all the company's systems on paper and on the company's Web site -- right down to how to clean the bathroom and mop the floor.

Wendy Achatz and her husband, David, founded their pie company in 1993. They now have 50 flavors.
Katina Scott prepares single servings at Achatz Handmade Pie Co., which had revenues of $3.5 million in 2004.