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At first glance, Nick Robins-Early's new project appears to be the kind of at-home baking adventure that became popular during the lockdown months of the pandemic. But Layoff Pies seems to be poised to become more than a mere hobby.
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The former HuffPo employee announced on Twitter earlier this week that he was starting a pie company. "If you're a journalist who got laid off in 2021 come pick up a free Thanksgiving pie this Saturday or Wednesday at the opening of the Layoff Pies shop," he wrote on Twitter. Robins-Early himself was part of the HuffPo layoffs that made the news earlier this year.
Laid-off journalists are invited to visit the pop-up space and grab a treat at Sommwhere on the Lower East Side this Saturday between Noon and 8pm and on Wednesday between 1:30pm and 9pm.
Good news for those not in the journalism industry: some pies are available for pre-order on Instagram.
The writer-slash-baker tells Grub Street that he will be dishing out two kinds of pies: a malted-chocolate chess one ($30) and a blackberry-apple version ($35) that "is a more traditional fruit pie, with a lot of Thanksgiving-y cinnamon, cardamom-type spices."
As for the name of the enterprise—Layoff Pies (a very good monicker, indeed)—Robins-Early explains that, after getting laid off in March of 2021, he found the need to thank friends and co-workers for their support by baking them pies. "So I started going around town and delivering what I called 'layoff pies,'" he recalls. "But I didn't really have any intentions to do anything more than that at first." Fast-forward a few months and the wordsmith decided to spread the love once more, this time targeting his own clan of journalists.
Although the amateur baker has no plans to leave the journalism business just yet, he does hope for the pop-up project to eventually become something permanent or, at the very least, regular. You can find more information on the project here.