Ascutney
Last spring, after Burnham cooked up some pies and delivered them to different locations around the state, two stores agreed to carry them. When he tested his dough-making in a commercial mixer at a manufacturer of baking equipment in southern New Hampshire, the company asked to become Burnham’s partner, providing an 80-quart mixer, a dough sheeter, vacuum sealer, commercial oven and capital to the startup business.
With that foundation, Burnham moved ahead with his plans for a retail and commercial pie-making business. On Saturday, he opened Pearl’s Pie of Perfection, which is part pie factory and part full-menu café.
“I’m starting a new business, a new career,” said Burnham, 71, inside the location last week while workers rushed to finish last-minute preparations. “It is really something I have been doing for 30 years; I have been baking pies and the last 15 of it has been in Vermont.”
Pearl’s is located at the intersection of Routes 5 and 131 in a former convenience store and gas station that closed several years ago. (The pumps have been removed).
Burnham has been renovating the interior since November. In addition to the baking equipment, there is a large cooler, a freezer that can hold a few thousand pies, a pizza oven and seating where customers can watch pies being made while enjoying a meal.
Burnham was born and raised in Connecticut north of Hartford and had a lengthy career in the financial services and insurance field based in southwestern Connecticut and New York City.
His interest in baking had its roots in his childhood, when his late mother, Pearl, a home economics teacher and namesake of the business, taught her five children how to sew, iron and bake.
Burnham began making pies for family and friends over the holidays about 30 years ago. He is self-taught, with no formal training as a pastry chef.
“It is all in the crust,” he said with a smile, when asked what makes a great pie.
“I always cooked or (did) something for holidays instead of going out and buying a bunch of presents,” Burnham said. “It got to the point I’d make 30 or 40 pies on Thanksgiving.”
Fast forward to last spring, when a project he was working on involving the health insurance industry got bogged down in the fight over the Affordable Care Act.
In the meantime, Burnham traveled to Saxtons River to help his daughter move.
Vermont was a familiar place to Burnham, as his family spent many winters vacationing near Mt. Snow during ski season.
“I was up here a couple of weeks and she said ‘Dad, why don’t you get a job.’ So I went out and talked to some people and went down to Harlow (Farm) in Westminster.”
At the farmstand’s Cafe Loco, Burnham spoke with the owner, who invited him to “make some pies.”
After a week, working nights because the kitchen was small, Burnham had about 30 or 40 pies, including his best-seller, a melange of raspberry, blackberry, blueberry and peach.
“I would take half the pies and drive around the state giving them away — stores, wherever I thought I could promote them,” he said.
Jake’s Market, which has several area locations, agreed to stock them, and later on, so did the Jiffy Mart convenience chain, Burnham said.
“Those two accounts represent about 50 percent of the distribution sites,” Burnham said.
In late summer, Burnham began leasing the kitchen at the Putney Inn in Putney, but realized he was not going to build a business making dough by hand.
“If I was going to do this in a big way, I needed equipment,” he said.
He traveled to Salem, N.H., to a large maker of commercial baking equipment to test his dough and was impressed that the company’s mixer could make 150 to 200 pounds of dough in about a minute without compromising its consistency.
Burnham said he was there for just an hour, but made a point to bring down pie ingredients.
“I baked a couple of pies right there in their factory,” Burnham said. “I think we made strawberry-rhubarb and the raspberry-blackberry-blueberry-peach. I cooked them up and just left them. I wasn’t expecting anything. About a month later, they called and said, ‘we’d like to make your acquaintance.’ ”
The company extended an offer to partner with Burnham, supplying Pearl’s with equipment for both the pie business, and in March, pizza ovens.
“I’m really excited about it,” Burnham said. “The partnership and the opportunities it provides me with. They will introduce me to a much broader market.”
The company will have a booth at the Chicago Food Show in June and is asking Burnham to come out with about 250 pies.
Burnham has ambitious growth plans for Pearl’s. He expects to hire 15 people immediately and is currently looking at a storefront on Main Street in Windsor to “manufacture” a line of meat pies, which will come in single servings and family size.
“I think within 18 months we could be employing 50 or 60 people,” he said.
Burnham wants to sell his pies in area co-ops, and said Whole Foods has expressed an interest in carrying the pies when he is ready for that scale of production.
Pearl’s product supplier is Upper Valley Produce in White River Junction, which will also deliver the pies throughout New England.
Looking out the large picture window at Pearl’s, Burnham points across the intersection to a former post office where he is thinking of opening a tavern with three apartments in the upstairs.
He is even toying with the idea of roof-top seating at the Ascutney location, which he found while driving around the area.
“I scouted about seven locations and found this one to be the best,” Burnham said, adding that purveyors of products such as jams and syrup will be able to use some shelf space at Pearl’s to stock their products.
Patrick O’Grady can be reached at pogclmt@gmail.com.
