One has more than 20 years of experience in hospital nursing, primarily in the cardiology specialty. The other has 25 years of experience as a general foreman with tree service companies.
So, with that background, what did this married couple decide to open in November 2019 just prior to a pandemic? A bakery, of course!
Malinda and Dan Stevey of Moundsville, without any business ownership experience or any work in retail, agreed to open American Pies and Pastries. They have proven since that you can indeed reinvent your career. So, who was the one with the initial idea? Neither! It was a friend who first nudged them with the idea.
“That is all my friend’s fault, who is also a nurse,” Malinda joked. “She was doing an arts and crafts festival … she’s an artist. She said, ‘Hey, I don’t want to do it by myself. You got to be able to make something.’
“I said, the only thing I’m good at making is fried pies because we have a small orchard, and I’ve been making fried pies for a long time. So we went up there just to help her so she wouldn’t have to do it by herself. And then absolutely loved it.
“I’d never sold anything before. I never worked retail. I never worked a restaurant. It was all brand new. And I think when you get to middle age, and you find something different, you think, ‘hey, wait a second. We could do something different.’”
And Dan thought, “I was for it. I put in a lot of time and effort making it happen too.
“We got a lot of local stores that actually helped us out a lot. Put our product in the stores. And in return we’ve made a lot of friends with a lot of local businesses.”
Both mentioned Valley Meat and Cheese, Miklas Meat Market and other small, local businesses as being supportive and instrumental in building and growing their business by placing their product while offering advice and encouragement.
The bakery is located at the Wheeling Centre Market, in the spot that previously housed Oliver’s Pies. As people mill through Centre Market, they can shop, enjoy artwork, eat a meal and then visit American Pies and Pastries for a unique, delicious dessert. There are several options to satisfy every sweet tooth.
Cheesecake, which has become Dan’s specialty, comes in several flavors: cherry, strawberry, blueberry, white chocolate raspberry swirl, peanut butter-chocolate, chocolate, caramel apple, pumpkin, and plain. If not cheesecake, then cookies offer another option. Chocolate chip, double chocolate chip, peanut butter or sugar may be on the day’s menu. Chocolate brownies iced different ways could be the choice.
And finally, the fried pies. A hand-held, portable piece of pie. Take your pick from: apple, cherry, blackberry, blueberry, bumbleberry (a combination of several berries), strawberry, lemon, Boston cream, banana cream, chocolate, coconut cream, Buckeye (peanut butter and chocolate), and The Elvis (peanut butter and banana). The signature flavor, and the genesis for the business, is the fried cherry pie.
“I would say the cherry (fried pie) because that is how we started,” Malinda said. “We had this little orchard. Cherries all come at once and if you don’t hurry the birds will eat them. So me and my kids would be picking cherries, picking cherries. We’d have all these cherries.
“So, we played around with that. Everywhere we went for the past 15 years. . . summer cookouts. . . we’d bring fried cherry pies.”
Dan said, “Our kids eat pies. A child, a slice of pie is not attractive to them, but you put them in that, all of a sudden they want that. Now it’s more like a treat instead of eating pie.”
What started as a family treat grew into a small startup company showing continued growth. Now, orders and daily output are much larger than in those early days. So too has the physical bakery to meet the increasing numbers.
“We would make like 10. Our first big order was like 25,” Malinda said. “We were like, it’s out of control, it’s too much. But now we are like. . . that’s nothing.
“So, we’ve progressed because I told (Dan) I’m really liking this. And he said, ‘We need a new shed anyways. Why don’t I build one that we can use as a bakery?’ Well it turned out to be 28×30 with a loft ceiling and the whole thing. He made a whole commercial bakery.
“The community’s been very encouraging and helpful. The Marshall County Health Department helped us put all that together. They came in and walked through the space when it was just a framework,” Malinda said.
The department gave them directions on want they needed to do and connected them to others for assistance with the construction.
American Pies and Pastries is open Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and Friday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
