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About Us
The Hawthorne House Pie Room was established in September, 2009 and is located in the lower level of the Hawthorne House chapel.
My name is Irene Sparks and my husband's name is Jon. We are the owners of Hawthorne House which is a wedding and reception facility located in Parkville, Missouri. Hawthorne House was established in 1997, and has been selected as Best of Weddings by the Knot magazine in 2007, 2008 & 2009. We have held over 1000 weddings and receptions at Hawthorne House and served over 220,000 meals to guests. We feel very blessed to have such a wonderful business and such wonderful employees. We look forward to holding many more weddings and receptions in the years to come. For more information on Hawthorne House, please visit our website at www.thehawthornehouse.com
This leads me to the story of the Pie Room. The Hawthorne House chapel had a small reception room on the lower level of the chapel called the Whitman room. The Whitman room has its own enterance and parking lot. In the past, we held small receptions, rehearsal dinners and private dinner parties in this room. Our wedding and reception business is very rewarding and we love what we do. However, weddings and receptions are somewhat seasonal in Kansas City with our off season taking place between the months of November and March. During thiese months it becomes necessary to cut our employees hours to fit our events. In past years this has not made a big impact on our employees. However, like many others the current recession is impacting our employees and their families. We wanted to do something to help. We realized that many of them would benefit by getting steady hours they could count on every week.
We decided to stop doing events in the Whitman room and turn it into another smaller business with regular hours that didn't conflict with our weddings and receptions. We thought of opening a wine bar or a coffee shop, but decided that we should go with something we love. I love to bake pies. Pies are also very comforting and evoke feelings and memories of wonderful times in our lives. I set out to develop the best pie crust recipe possible. Then I went about finding the recipes for my pies. First I researched recipes from cookbooks that were 40 years old or older, then current cookbooks and finally I went through my cooking magazines. To my amazement I came up with 157 pie recipes for the pies I wanted to offer in the Hawthorne House Pie Room.
This gave me the idea for how to run my pie room. I would offer different pies every month allowing our customers to taste different pies. These pies would come from our list of 157 pies. I would also offer what we call our 48-Hour-Notice Pies. This would allow our customers to order a pie they had tasted in the past or any of the 157 pies with 48 hour notice. The 48-Hour-Notice Pies may be picked up during our regular business hours of Thursday, Friday and Saturday 11am to 4pm. Having such a large selection would set us apart from other pie businesses.
So, I spoke with my employees and asked them if they would like to work steady hours in a pie room. They were very enthusiastic about the idea of a pie room and about bringing in a steady income during our off season. The Whitman room got a face lift, some of the staff got lessons in pie making, and the Hawthorne House Pie Room was opened on September 15th. Six of our employees now have regular hours that will not only carry them through our off season, but will give them regular hours through our busy season.
I think our pies are wonderful. We have had great reviews from customers and food critics alike. We invite you to join us for a piece of pie and a cup of coffee, to purchase a whole pie, or to place a pie order.
Thank you for reading about our Pie room and we hope to see you soon.
Sincerely.......Irene Sparks
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