Amanda Wilbanks has fond childhood memories of helping her grandmother bake each Sunday after church.
“I made biscuits every single Sunday with my grandmother and then she would take the biscuit dough and she would make another set of biscuits for the cobbler,” said Wilbanks. “And so I think my love for cooking grew from my grandmother Betty and my mom.”
Years later, Wilbanks took her passion for baking and opened Southern Baked Pie Company in Gainesville in 2012. While the business has grown exponentially to include three additional locations in Alpharetta, Buckhead and Vinings, Wilbanks and her staff have kept to generations-old pie recipes and good ole fashioned Southern hospitality.
“When you come in, a lot of times we know your name,” said Wilbanks. “When you walk into Southern Baked, it’s like that warm, classic Southern feeling where you feel like you’re getting a hug.”
In addition to keeping with her family’s recipes, Wilbanks and her staff bake each pie fresh daily. They use a pie crust recipe that Wilbanks developed herself and include ingredients purchased from local farms.
“Locally we buy all of our buttermilk from Mountain Fresh Creamery, in Georgia we get all of our pecans from South Georgia Pecan Company and then we get all of our peaches from Dickey Farms in South Georgia and we go down and pick them up,” said Wilbanks.
As Southern Baked Pie Company has grown, so has Wilbanks’s success. In July 2020 alone, Wilbanks was named to the University of Georgia’s 40 Under 40 list and Southern Baked Pie Company was named a Georgia Small Business ROCK STAR by the Georgia Department of Economic Development.
If that’s not enough- Southern Baked Pie Company products are also sold at Williams-Sonoma stores.
“In the beginning when we started Southern Baked in 2012, I looked at my mom on the first day and said, ‘I’m going to get my pies into Williams-Sonoma and I am going to be on UGA’s 40 Under 40,” said Wilbanks.
But despite their success, Wilbanks and her staff are not slowing down. Southern Baked Pie Company offers a Pie of the Month Club, which offers a pie subscription at a discounted rate. And the Pie of the Month plans just keep coming.
“In August, the Georgia Belle peaches come in and that’s when we make our peach crumble with a brown sugar oat topping and we’ll also have a blackberry pie the last Friday in July,” said Wilbanks.
In the meantime, Southern Baked Pie Company offers pickup, delivery, catering and even shipping for all of their products. More information is on SouthernBakedPie.com and included in the video above.
