The Williams sisters in Des Moines are leading a volunteer effort to bake hundreds of pies for Thanksgiving and they hope to expand the operation beyond Des Moines in the future.
Their “Eat Free Pie” odyssey began in 2020, during the pandemic, after Kaylee Williams had a conversation with her 70-year-old neighbor Chuck. “We were standing in our front yards and he said: ‘I’m old and I’m immunocompromised and so I’ll have to be along for the holiday,’” Kaylee Williams told Radio Iowa. And I said: ‘Well, Chuck, what if I made you a pie?’ And he said: ‘Well, that’d be great,’ and I went home and made Chuck a pie….and then I thought to myself: ‘I wonder how many people are going to be alone on Thanksgiving Day?”
Clair Williams came up with the system for labeling and distributing 40 pies back in 2020. It’s year six of the operation and the pie count is into the hundreds. “We have a little bit of a larger operating team this year that’s helping out on all fronts between logistics and baking pies and picking up pies and packaging pies,” Clair Williams said. “Lots of volunteers.”…