Walmart Sells One Of These Popular Pies Every Two Seconds
In the food world, 2015 was the year avocado toast won the internet (via Eater). But if you're looking for the hottest single brand-name product from 2015, we would nominate Patti LaBelle's sweet potato pie. Available only at Walmart, this popular Southern dessert sold out a couple weeks before Thanksgiving, thanks to an especially glowing video review (via Yahoo!). Demand was so much greater than supply that the person picking up the phone at one Walmart, at least, answered by saying, "Thank you for calling Walmart, we're out of the Patti LaBelle pie, how can I help you?" (via The Washington Post).
The pie wasn't flying off the shelves, technically. Truth be told, at one Walmart at least, the pie wasn't making it to the shelves in the first place. Employees were handing the pies to waiting customers before they even had a chance to put prices on them, according to Yahoo! The price, in addition to that video review, probably motivated a lot of these eager customers. The pie sold in 2015 for $3.48, which is less than the writer for The Washington Post spent buying the ingredients he needed to make the same pie at home.
Walmart told Yahoo! Back in 2015 that it was selling one pie every second for a 72-hour period after the video came out, which amounts to almost $1 million in pie sales. This Patti LaBelle person is sure to get famous with a pie recipe as successful as this one!
Patti LaBelle had a few hits before her Walmart sweet potato pie
Just so you know, we were joking about Patti LaBelle gaining fame through cooking. We know very well that LaBelle is an enormously successful R&B singer with a couple Grammy awards to her credit (via AllMusic). But still, the pie royalties must be contributing significantly to her net worth. After all, the sweet potato pie is still a hot seller at Walmart. According to an article published this month by Food & Wine, Walmart still sells Patti LaBelle sweet potato pies at a rate of almost one every two seconds. While that kind of sales rate might conjure images of those lines of customers waiting for their unpriced pies in 2015, keep in mind Walmart has thousands of stores in the U.S., and the retailer typically sells two pumpkin pies per second in November, according to Yahoo!
After the sweet success of sweet potato pie, LaBelle and Walmart shrewdly agreed to expand their product line, which now includes southern buttermilk pie, peach cobbler, bread pudding, and banana pudding, according to Food & Wine. And LaBelle's sweet potato pie can still make your Thanksgiving menu in 2020. Check your local Walmart for availability. The pie is still priced right, at $3.98 for a pie that weighs one pound and five ounces.