Callender, Marie (1907–1995)

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Callender, Marie (1907–1995)

American piemaker and businesswoman who turned a struggling business into a multimillion-dollar restaurant chain. Born in 1907 in South Dakota; died in Laguna Hills, California, on November 11, 1995; married Cal Callender, in 1924; children: one son, Donald Callender.

Steered by hard work, persistence, and some luck, Marie Callender's life is a classic American rags-to-riches story. Born in South Dakota in 1907, as a young girl she accompanied her poor but hardworking family when they moved to California in search of a better life. In 1924, she married Cal Callender; both she and her husband were 17 at the time. During the next decades, life was difficult for the couple and their young son Donald, as they worked long hours and struggled to make ends meet. The small family was a happy one, however, though they remained only a paycheck or two from economic disaster.

To raise additional money once their son was in school, Marie began to work part-time. In the mid-1940s, the family was living in the Long Beach area when she answered a newspaper advertisement for delicatessen help. She worked in the deli on a part-time basis, making salads and preparing simple hot meals. When her boss opened a snack bar, he asked her to bake pies there; the oven, however, was not the right type, so Marie and her mother—an experienced pie-baker—began to bake pies in her own kitchen. Work was so physically demanding that one Saturday in 1948, after producing countless pies and dragging one too many 100-pound sacks of flour around her kitchen, Marie announced to her boss that she was quitting.

So pleased was Callender's boss with the quality of her pies that he talked her into starting her own pie business, assuring her that he would be her steady customer. Marie and Cal took the risky plunge into a small-business venture. Their almost total lack of capital necessitated the sale of their only major asset, a new Chevrolet; once outstanding bills were paid, about $700 remained in the family treasury. With this modest sum, Marie purchased an old oven and three rolling pins. They rented an old Quonset Hut in Long Beach and began baking pies and other items on a wholesale basis for local shops. Marie, Cal and their son Don worked in the simple facility. Hours were long and gruelling, and during the early years of the business Cal baked all night, only to shower, eat breakfast, and deliver pies most of the day. Determined to help his parents succeed, Don quit college to assist in the fledgling enterprise.

The business grew only modestly for the next decade. In 1962, they moved into the retail food world with a small pie and coffee shop, called Marie Callender's, on Tustin Avenue in Orange, California. With little name recognition despite the quality of Marie's pies, the challenge was to pick up a loyal customer base before bankruptcy. Thanks to Don's ingenuity, the little shop began offering a free slice of pie and cup of coffee to all first-time customers. The line out-side Marie Callender's was three blocks long during the first few days. Won over by the excellence of the pies, most of the customers became steadies and spread the word throughout the town. Another feature that intrigued customers was the pie oven, which Marie placed where it could be seen in the window from the street. Watching their pies going in and out the oven pleased patrons immensely, giving them a sense of participation in the baking process. In 1964, the shop added soup and sandwiches to the menu, and by the end of the 1960s a rapidly growing number of Callender restaurants were in operation in southern California.

By the 1970s, the Callender family was in charge of a veritable empire of restaurants. Don's marketing ability, along with Marie's insistence on high quality in all items sold (particularly in the pies), resulted in a huge success for the precarious enterprise that had begun decades earlier in a Quonset Hut. In 1986, Marie Callender proudly told a reporter that she always was certain that the quality of her pies was excellent: "everybody predicted we'd go broke, but we outlived 'em all. So we knew we had something better." Even when their restaurants became successful, the Callenders spent virtually no money on advertising, preferring to let word of mouth do the work of publicity for them. Quality control was maintained on an informal basis by Marie; even in "retirement," she continued to eat in a Marie Callender's restaurant every so often and report any substandard pies or other items to her son, who was CEO of the chain.

After Cal's death in 1984, when Marie was living in a retirement home and no longer active in the business, Don placed the Marie Callender chain on the market. A number of corporate leaders, including Joan Kroc of McDonald's, expressed an interest in the company that in 1985 had sales of $180 million, with 119 restaurants in California and 11 other states. In February 1986, Marie Callender's Pie Shops, Inc. was purchased by Ramada Inns for nearly $90 million in cash and stocks. As part of the deal, Don Callender remained as chief executive officer. Marie, who had long been living at Leisure World in Laguna Hills, told reporters, "I really have no feeling about it. I've been out of the business for too long." Yet, she continued to visit Marie Callender's pie shops, enjoying the pies and passing on whatever information her son might need to maintain the high standard of quality she had set in Long Beach many decades earlier. Marie Callender, a household name not only for her pies but also for a line of frozen dinners, died in a nursing home in Laguna Hills on November 11, 1995.