The Pi Day rush is real for Boston-area bake shops. Here's how they deliver

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It’s hard to beat how busy a pie shop gets ahead of Thanksgiving. But this week comes pretty close.

Fran Kolenik, the owner of Drive-By Pies in Brookline, says Pi Day — aka March 14, aka 3/14, aka this Saturday — is always the second-busiest day of the year for her bake shop.

“It’s a big day for geeks,” said Kolenik with a laugh. “Math geeks, no offense.”

And in the Boston area — again, no offense — there are a lot of them.

Despite living in Massachusetts most of her life, Kolenik says she didn’t know about Pi Day until she opened her store eight years ago.  “I started getting phone calls from tech companies and stuff, and I'm like, ‘Wait, what again?’ I was an English major, not a math major,” she said. “So then that first year here, we were not prepared.”

Drive-By Pies has come a long way since then.

When I visited the pie shop this past week, Kolenik and her team were working to prepare Pi Day orders to start delivering the next day — slicing apples, rolling dough and pulling pies out of the oven. She and her team of three swung from station to station in the small kitchen, taking turns prepping desserts or fixing coffee for walk-in customers. And though the flavors were traditional (smells of apple, blueberry and cinnamon filled the air), there was one special touch to help set apart the Pi Day orders: a pi symbol, cut out from each round pie’s top crust.

Kolenik took a break to show me her order list, which she kept in a large binder. This year’s deliveries included dozens of round pies and slab pies — and hundreds of miniature hand pies for companies and institutions across New England, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston Children’s Hospital and Hasbro Children’s Hospital in Providence.

MIT in particular has a longstanding tradition of leaning into the Pi Day celebration. The school releases its regular action admissions decisions annually on March 14. “Pi Day is a special day at MIT, as we get to celebrate both math and our newly admitted class of students,” Stu Schmill, the school’s dean of admissions, said in an email.

Decisions usually go out at 6:28 p.m. (which is another math reference: Tau Time). But for 2026, there’s a slight twist. “In the true spirit of pi (3.1415926…), decisions will be released on 3/14 at 1:59 p.m. in the year ’26,” said Schmill.

The school will also dole out actual pie — including more than a dozen slab pies from Kolenik’s shop — to make the day a little sweeter. “It's become a day that folks on and off campus look forward to all year,” Schmill said.

The fact that Pi Day falls on a Saturday — rather than a weekday —this year has tempered the usual rush for local pie shops. Kolenik said she’s gotten fewer orders, and that they’re more spread out. Jill Remby, owner of Petsi’s Pies in Somerville, told my colleague Amy Sokolow the same.

“ I suspect that the offices and the Monday-through-Friday places that usually order from us are maybe not [celebrating] because it falls on a Saturday,” Remby said. “And I think that companies and academic institutions are just spending less.”

Still, Kolenik delights in all the unique visits she receives on Pi Day. She’s hoping to see a returning customer whose birthday is March 14. “ She would always come in and she would have a T-shirt that said ‘3.14 is my birthday,’ ” Kolenik said.

The date also signifies the end of the slow winter season for her bakery — and the start of spring pie-involved holidays, like St. Patrick’s Day and Easter.

“It’s just a fun, quirky reason to eat pie,” said Kolenik. “And you know, we need more reasons to eat pie.”

P.S. — If all that pie talk has made you hungry, check out these three recipes for savory pies from Here & Now resident chef Kathy Gunst, perfect for a Pi Day brunch.