New ways to think about pie

Rebecca Vang has always been pretty business savvy.  

After growing up in a Hmong community in California, she moved to Las Vegas early in her adulthood and shortly thereafter began a career in marketing research and brand development. 

Yet, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, she and her husband found themselves searching for a change of lifestyle: setting their sights on Upstate New York and shifting their eyes to a new prize, or one may say pies.

“We wanted to make a change for ourselves, and that’s how we ended up in Rochester,” says Vang. 

Now, after four years, a permanent move across the country, and the birth of her first child, Vang is celebrating her bakery, Crust Pie Co.’s first storefront location at 133 Gregory St. in the South Wedge neighborhood.

While the store opened in late September, Vang’s vision of starting a pie shop began almost 10 years ago.  

Her ambition to bake? Rather simple: “it’s really hard to find really good pies,” Vang says. “The only time you really find pies is at the grocery store and around Thanksgiving, right?”

So, Vang decided to take matters into her own hands, crafting pies for family and friends around the holidays. 

“It became something that I became very passionate about and pretty good at …. and it got to a point where I started thinking about what would happen if I started to actually try to sell this product,” she says. “Dealing with a lot of personal woes ourselves, I decided that the best thing for myself was to maybe start a business and really learn how to cherish and love the work that I was doing.”

After quitting her job on the West Coast and moving to Rochester in 2021, Vang and her husband set full steam ahead on opening Crust, first by vending at the Brighton and Fairport farmers markets. 

After initially operating at the Commissary, a local shared commercial kitchen, Vang and her team of five moved production to Gregory St. to meet storage and time demands. Now, over two years later, Crust has a retail location: countertop on one side, kitchen on the other.

“One huge reason for the delay is because we moved here when I was seven months pregnant,” Vang laughs “I have a type A personality, so my ambitions were much larger than the reality of what we could do.” 

That’s not to say that Vang’s time commitment has grown any less: along with managing her business, most weekends have her coming to the shop at 3 a.m. to begin production for the day. 

“I mean, those are the difficult parts,” she says. “But the easy parts are … where you start noticing real appreciation in the products that you’re providing. Those kinds of things make a big difference.” 

At the end of the day, Vang’s pies are a labor of love. As the main creator of Crust’s recipes, many flavor combinations are adapted from family favorites, travel recollections, and pieces of her own culture as a first-generation Asian-American.

Desserts like Crust’s peanut butter and jam fluff pie tie in favorite flavors from Vang’s husband and his grandfather, while the salted caramel apple pie highlights seasonal flavors and produce from local vendors at the Fairport farmer’s market. 

Likewise, Vang leans into pie’s adaptability as a medium: fusing dishes like bolognese and Japanese curry into savory pies and amping up classics with new flavors — for instance, her addition of nutty black sesame into a classically composed banana cream pie. 

One of Crust’s fan favorites, a Vietnamese coffee pie, first began as a collaboration with the Asian American and Pacific Islander-owned coffee shop Winter Swan, spinning its rich coffee brew into a delicious custard to complete Vang’s signature buttery crust. 

Partnerships like these align with Vang’s larger ambitions with Crust: sharing new flavors and pieces of her heritage with the community around her. 

“I always say, there’s nothing more American than pie, and blending my culture and … Asian-American influences … with what we do, I love doing that because it really speaks to a part of who I am,” she says.  “I want to continue to be a pillar in the AAPI community … so being able to infuse the flavors that I grew up with … and things that are popular right now too; I’m really proud that we can bring that to the table and bring that to customers here who may not be familiar with it.” 

“People actually are engaging in conversation with us when we are sitting at the table,” continues Vang, with the other metaphorical seats filled by customers, fellow small business owners, and the community. 

And of course, according to her, they’re all eating a slice of pie. 

Crust Pie Co.’s storefront location is located at 133 Gregory St. and is open weekly on Fridays from 8 a.m. – 1 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 9 a.m. – 2 p.m. If you’re looking for a dessert for the holidays, more information can be found at Crust’s website, Instagram, or Facebook. 

Alex Holly is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer and member of the Oasis Project’s second cohort. 

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