Baking up a business

Lauren Collins Cline brings her Slightly Crooked Pies to Elm Street

Flanked by her husband, Drew, left, and Manchester Mayor Jay Ruais, Lauren Collins Cline cuts the ribbon during the opening celebration for Slightly Crooked Pies on Elm Street in Manchester on March 26. At left is Rohan Cline and Sebastian Cline. (Mike Cote)

During the celebration for her new downtown business, Lauren Collins Cline was handed a giant pair of golden scissors. You can’t cut ribbon with a rolling pin.

Slightly Crooked Pies, the dream project of the longtime communications and public relations professional, opened in March at 1209 Elm St. in Manchester. When Cline started selling her homemade fruit pies wholesale, she figured it would be a couple of years before she opened a retail shop.

“Very quickly, I started doing in wholesale in a month what I would be paying in rent. Then I realized I was missing out on the retail portion,” Cline said as she scrambled with her staff to wait on customers.

The city’s business liaison helped her make the leap.

“At that same time, Eric Lesniak was working his magic and connected me with the landlord here and was keeping an eye out for opportunities and spaces and really cheering me on, and it all just came together,” the Bedford resident said.

To help finance the project, Cline baked a lot of pies and dipped into her savings.

“I did 425 pies at Thanksgiving,” said Cline, who baked her first pie (apple) at 23 when she hosted her first Thanksgiving. “I took everything from that and put it toward the first month and security. And then I cashed out half my retirement.”

Cline aims to earn back that investment. “I didn’t want to put myself into debt doing this, and I figured that this is hopefully the last job I’ll ever have and this will be my retirement, so it made the most sense that I pay myself back and earn interest instead of paying the bank back,” she said.

“All respect to people who do bank financing — there’s a lot of great programs for small businesses and startups — it just wasn’t what I was comfortable doing right now. I put a bet on myself.”

During Thanksgiving, Cline baked those 425 pies by herself. Now she has four part-time employees, including her stepson, Rohan Cline, 21. Her 13-year-old son, Sebastian, helps out on weekends.

In addition to fruit pies, including the award-winning Blueberry Lavender she baked for her grand opening, Cline has expanded her lineup with cream and custard pies, because now she has the kitchen she needs. (Unlike the one in her circa-1740s home in Bedford, where pies usually came out crooked, this one has level floors.)

“We have lemon meringue and chocolate cream right now. In the summer we’ll go to key lime and s’mores, and then in the fall we’ll do pumpkin and pepper-mint hot cocoa,” Cline said.

The store stocks meat pies made by another company.

“We do have chicken pies in the freezer, and they’re made by somebody out of a commissary kitchen. But I didn’t want to get into the business of a hood system and having to do time and temperature control,” she said.

Cline, who continues to work as a consultant for Montagne Powers, a public relations firm in Manchester, is busy enough making dessert pies. The shop is open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday through Friday and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday.

“I’m toying with the idea of Sundays.

Selfishly, I want to go to church. We’re going to figure out the balance there. And then Mondays and Tuesdays we’re baking. We do a lot of wholesale baking on Mondays and then get ready for the week and the shop on Tuesdays,” she said.

Like other small-business owners running on fumes to fulfill a dream, Cline is fueled by passion.

“Being here doesn’t feel like work,” she said. “I want to come here and I want to make a gorgeous pie, and I want to even out the bubbles in the wallpaper and get new merchandise to put on the shelves. It’s just so fun.”

Her husband, Drew Cline, president of the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy in Concord, praised the Manchester Economic Development Office for being business friendly.

“The whole permitting process was as easy as it could be,” he said. “They have gone out of their way to remove friction from that process to make everybody that you need to talk to available. Our questions all got answered very quickly.”

While he supports his wife in the business “as taste tester and chief for maintenance,” he’s not rolling out any pie dough.

“For her to be able to create a space like this — a warm, welcoming, happy environment — and serve people pies and just bringing joy to the world is really special,” he said. “It’s a great opportunity to make the world a little happier.”

The bakery/café arrives at a time when the Queen City is bustling with young people who have filled the hundreds of new apartment units that have sprung up in new construction or repurposed office buildings over the last several years.

Just a few blocks away, NeighborWorks Southern New Hampshire is building a four-story, 125-unit apartment building and 12 three-story townhouses on a former city-owned property on Pearl Street.

Businesses have been arriving to serve those residents, including NXT Coffee Bar, which opened across the street from Slightly Crooked Pies last year.

“You see these services coming together. That’s what residents and visitors want to see,” said Lesniak of the city’s economic development office.

Lauren Getts, vice president of the Greater Manchester Chamber, noted the bakery’s small-town vibes.

“I think that’s exactly what Lauren is going for,” Getts said. “She wants people to be able to walk right down the street and pop in and feel like they just walked into their home or grandmother’s kitchen.”