PieHoleGate: The Investigation

We would never want to steer you wrong at Foobooz. If we tell you there’s going to be free pie somewhere, there will dang well be free pie! After several commenters, as well as a few other pals who were on the scene, let us know there was no free pie as promised at the ‘Pushing Daisies’ Mobile Pie Hole, we took it back to the Pie Hole People. After the jump, the communication and an explanation.

Our original communication with the Pie Hole:

Hi – We posted the pie hole on our site and there were no free pies at the event. What gives? Our readers are not pleased.

The Pie Hole Speaks!:

As far as the your readers go, I am very sorry that they had trouble finding the Pie Hole. From the comments, my understanding is that they never made it to the pie hole, not that there were no pies. I can assure you that we had lots of pies to give out and the only reason there wouldn’t be any is if we had an overwhelming response and ran out by the time they showed up. Again, I’m sorry about the situation. Thanks again.

Like a pitbull (with lipstick!) we refused to let go:

It wasn’t the commenters – I had two colleagues go at 10:30 am and they said there was one pie and it was having its photo taken just outside Liberty Place. No pies at 10:30 and the event started at 10? It makes us look bad for running the item.

No one will dangle fake free pies in front of our readers! The Pie Hole responds:

Let me look into that with ABC directly. You’re right. I wouldn’t want you to be kind enough to share the information with your readers and have this be the situation. In every other city along the tour, there have been lots of pies (e.g. At Disney they gave away 6,500). Regardless, that doesn’t mean anything to you and your readers, I know. I will look into this and I sincerely apologize that this was the case (I have no clue why!).

Another conspiracy theory we posited. Can you keep politics out of pie?:

Thanks – if you can give me some info, I can put something in the post about it. Our commenters are kind of testy about it right now and they’re not making Pushing Daisies look very good. We also had a tip that Sarah Palin is holed up in Liberty Place right now (seriously), so maybe she had something to do with the potential pie problems?

The Pie Hole escalates!:

You’ll be happy to know that ABC looked into this immediately and I already have a response. The following is the reason for the lack of pies when your friends showed up…

The Pushing Daisies Mobile Pie Hole Team gave away pies from the start of the event until approximately 10:45am. After that, the pie giveaway was put on hold because they were literally going like hotcakes (or free pies, I guess!). Instead, at this time the team started giving away Pushing Daisies spatulas and pie cutters. The team held onto additional pies which they started giving away again at 11:15. They asked people interested in pies to please come back at 11, when they would begin giving away pies again. Basically, our team was trying to do their best to hold off giving everything away within the first hour (which would lead to unhappy customers/fans).

So it looks like your friends may have literally come at the exact wrong time, after pies were stopped but before they heard the announcement about the pies at 11:00 or so. And again, we’re sorry about the unfortunate situation for the people from your blog who came for pies at that time!

PieHoleGate. There you have it