KYLE, Texas — Texas Pie Company owner Julie Albertson has been baking pies for years. She wasn’t exactly rolling in the dough, however, when she started her first business.
“I had just lost my job so we decided to rent a pizza parlor that was empty at the time,” Albertson said. “We just rented it for two months to make a little money for the holidays and to pay rent and all that good stuff.”
Forty years later, the good stuff has paid off.
When you own your own business, you wear a lot of hats. In Albertson’s case, she’s the boss and baker. She also wears a crown, so to speak. Albertson is known as the Texas Pie Queen.
“Who told you that?! Yes, I have been called that. I don’t call myself that. I’m very modest when it comes to stuff like that. I’m just a baker,” she said.
You could say Albertson’s secret ingredient to success goes back decades. Nella Bernice, Albertson’s grandmother, was a huge influence on her life and kitchen skills.
“I had been baking since I was 11 with my grandmother, and it was something that really came naturally to me to do, and it just expounded and blew up,” she said.
Albertson says every customer and employee is like family to her, and it’s that one special ingredient from her grandmother that turned the Texas Pie Company into a sweet success story.
“If you can see it, you can be it, and you can do it,” said Albertson.
