NEW YORK CITY - In a Hell's Kitchen high-rise that advertises the services of a pet concierge, you smell apartment 18b before you see it. Not an overpowering, cloying odor, just the subtle, pleasant whiff of something buttery in the oven.
Follow your nose and you'll find Cute As Cake, a clown car of a bakery operating inside 643-square feet of precious Manhattan real estate. Its raspberry pink walls house three ovens, four fridges, countless boxes of pre-crushed Oreos, three-to-four bushels of green Granny Smith apples (depending on the week) and up to eight humans who expertly steer around Brobdingnagian tubs of chocolate chips and sugar lining a narrow hallway.
"There's a lotta bumps," says owner Stacy Donnelly. She means actual physical collisions, not erratic financial returns. The gastronomic demands of audiences queuing up to see "Waitress," keep Donnelly and her team busy producing between 1,500 and 2,000 pies a week for Broadway's Brooks Atkinson Theatre, home to the Sara Bareilles musical that celebrates the weird genius of a pregnant pie-maker named Jenna.
On a Monday in late September, Matt Guzman pats an Oreo crust into 4-ounce quilted jelly jars. Next, he'll add a layer of caramel, followed by a chocolate ganache topped with whipped cream and sea salt. How many Weight Watchers points is the Salted Chocolate Caramel pie? Donnelly jokes that she's looking into it. What she does know is that it's a best-seller, hawked alongside other flavors for $12 a pop by women wandering the aisles of the theater shouting "pies and wine!" and costumed in the powder blue uniforms and white aprons worn by Jenna and her sister hash slingers, Becky and Dawn. (Yes, if you're wondering - those four, sweet ounces, the equivalent of a slice of pie, are worth every penny).
The day before "Waitress" kicks off its national tour in Cleveland, Donnelly will drive about 1,000 pies - the Salted Chocolate Caramel and a Key Lime - to Playhouse Square. Apple Crumble, another fan favorite, might be added to the order in the second or third week. Guzman has volunteered to make subsequent deliveries so he can visit his sister and brother-in-law in Euclid. "I love Cleveland!" he says.
The on-site pie sales are the brainchild of producer Barry Weissler and part of a diabolically canny plan to create a full, sensory experience for people coming to "Waitress" - on Broadway and on the road. If you're watching pies being made, eaten and sung about on onstage, he reasoned, why not eat them too?
Donnelly, a former dancer who doesn't look like she samples many of those Oreo pieces, became the woman behind the pies of "Waitress" after she was hired to make the opening night cake for "Pippin," produced by Weissler and wife Fran, and directed by Diane Paulus, who is also helming "Waitress."
She fashioned a creation that stood 5-feet-tall, two inches shy of her height barefoot. The cake had moving, spinning parts. In a nod to the acrobatic-themed revival, three-dimensional replicas of cast members cavorted across its frosting, executing back bends, hanging upside down and "doing Fosse," says Donnelly.
Barry Weissler took notice. "Can you do pies?" he asked. He ordered 200 mini versions of the dessert for a reading of "Waitress."
"Within 15 minutes, they were gone," says Donnelly. "I saw Barry's eyes. He was like, 'We're onto something.' "
Famously, in addition to being able to nosh on pies during the show, (they are made fresh and contain no preservatives) patrons entering the Broadway house are greeted by the unmistakable bouquet of baking apple pie, courtesy of a convection oven housed in a custom, fireproof cabinet.
At first, they tried artificial scents. "It was awful - awful," says Weissler. "It was like a lavatory."
Donnelly came up with a recipe that was geared for maximal smell, if not taste. She added extra cinnamon and sugar and removed lemon juice, an ingredient that had the effect of sealing in aroma. At every performance, a frozen apple pie is popped into the oven at a lower temperature - 300 degrees - so it can keep emitting that homey, comforting fragrance without burning to a black cinder.
The lobby of Connor Palace, where "Waitress" will play a three-week run, is considerably larger than the one at the Atkinson, so Weissler has ordered up two convection ovens in rolling fireproof boxes to be positioned like sentries near the entrance. A local Whole Foods, following Donnelly's lead, will provide 16 pies a week to trigger the olfactory fancies of Cleveland theater-goers.
The effect is a Pavlovian dream. While other traditional pies like pumpkin and pecan have flat lined in favor of anything with chocolate, "the apple always sells," says Donnelly.