A line of people in camping chairs and pop-up tents snakes down Crosstimbers Street in Houston’s Independence Heights neighborhood. Many have brought portable heaters to brave this prolonged, quarter-mile trek that extends north up Old Yale Street well before the sun begins its ascent.
It’s just before dawn on Thanksgiving Eve, and the queue of customers, many repeating an annual ritual, numbers in the hundreds. No, there aren’t free turkeys being given away. These friends and soon-to-be-friends have gathered this Wednesday in pursuit of what will be the triumphant grace note of their Thanksgiving feast: scratch-made pies from Flying Saucer Pie Company.
Flying Saucer Pie Company
436 W. Crosstimbers St., Houston. 713-694-1141
flyingsaucerpieshop
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Those arriving an hour before the store opens at 7 a.m. will head to the end of a line that started at 3:30 p.m. two days prior. This includes the cooler-toting Alma Martinez, who for years has sought the coveted first spot in line. There’s also Jimmie Roy, a near 60-year veteran of the oil and gas industry who’s taken part in this anticipatory tradition for two decades. Partly he endures the preholiday horde to pick up gifts for his best clients. But Flying Saucer also specializes in nostalgic favorites like mincemeat that can be difficult to track down at today’s modern bakeries.
“A lot of people sleep out there to get pies—with good reason,” Roy says. “Everything is fresh, and they make the best ones in Houston.”
Enjoying this article?Part of what drives this kind of allegiance—evident in the tailgate-like atmosphere around the holidays—is the exacting standards employed by owner Heather Leeson and her family. Flying Saucer only sells pies that are less than 24 hours old, and most of the ingredients are sourced locally from the Houston Farmers Market.
“We are serious about putting as much of our money as possible back into the hands of other small community businesses,” she says. “It’s a symbiotic relationship that I like to foster because businesses like ours are an endangered species.”
On this Thanksgiving Eve, the pies are coming out of the oven in rapid succession, as an assembly line rushes them to the counter. A crew of 25 workers moves in furious but practiced rhythm while a line of customers feeds in and out of the shop all day. In the three-day rush leading up to Thanksgiving, the Houston institution will churn through over 23,000 eggs, 8,800 pounds of sugar, 37,000 pounds of strawberries—used for the filling of its top-selling strawberry cream pie—and enough flour and butter to sink an oil tanker. In total, the shop will sell more than 30,000 pies, a number 50 times greater than any similar stretch of time in the spring or summer.
Yet in the moment, Leeson refuses to think about all those sacks of flour and San Saba-grown pecans. Even the 1,700 pounds of cream cheese in the walk-in are enough to give her PTSD. To pull off this annual feat, she turns off that part of her brain and instead relies on muscle memory earned through decades spent in the pie-making trenches.
“Experience. And calendars. And caffeine,” Leeson says of her survival strategy. “And we take really good care of our people.”
That last sentiment is another echo of her late father, Bill Leeson, a Canadian immigrant who loved salty language and the sweet burn of whiskey. He instilled in Heather an appreciation for quality ingredients and people, both staff and customers.
“There is a whole list of rules for how staff is treated,” Leeson says. “Always provide health insurance. If somebody must miss time to take care of their families, they don’t lose their paychecks. Make sure everyone is paid well and gets time off. Do not take tips because the employees are our responsibility, not the public’s responsibility. Don’t get greedy. Don’t price gouge.”
Those rules have helped forge a loyal following that includes customers who have come to the store since it opened in 1967. Fittingly, Heather came into the world the day before Thanksgiving in 1974 and says she can’t remember a holiday where she hasn’t helped in the shop. In fact, her gregarious father—nicknamed “Pie Bill”—wasn’t afraid to put Heather on a shift starting at age 5.
A constant presence in the shop until just weeks before his death in 2015, Pie Bill employed the baking skills he gained as a Merchant Marine starting at age 15. Decamping from Canada in 1963 following an alleged deportation from France, Leeson opened his shop in Houston because the idea of apple pies symbolized quintessential Americana to him. Bill told his children the bakery was his legacy and the closest thing he would ever experience to actual child birth.
“He was literally living his American Dream,” Leeson says.
And each Thanksgiving, Flying Saucer makes Houstonians’ holiday pie dreams come true.
