How did Waltzing Kangaroo come to be? Part 4

In 2007, Steve began working full-time at Pie in the Sky Bakery in Erina. The bakery was very busy and had an excellent reputation. Everything on the menu was made from scratch. The bakery served about 40 different varieties of savory meat and vegetable pies. The pie fillings were made by roasting bones and vegetables for stock, then cooking the meat in the stock for hours so that the meat was extremely tender. The shortcrust and puff pastry for the pies was made fresh every day. Pie in the Sky also sold a large variety of Australian desserts and sweets, which were also made from scratch.

Over the next several years, whenever we travelled around Australia, we always tried pies – we tried so many pies! The more pies we tried, the more we were convinced our pies were something special. Over the years we often spoke about how wonderful it would be to introduce our meat pies and sweets to the U.S. market. When people would visit us they would have Steve’s pies and sweets and say “Oh, I wish we had these pies in {insert city}!” or “These pies would go over so well in {insert city}!”.

The idea of moving to America was always a possibility and by 2012 we decided it was “now or never”. By this time we had a 1 year old little boy and Steve began the process of applying for permanent residency, commonly referred to as a green card. The entire green card process too 2 years. In that time we spent countless hours discussing and researching different places that we thought we would like to move to and open a business.

In 2013 we decided we should move to the Lake Tahoe area (Truckee, California to be precise). We figured we were trading the beach for the mountains…and we loved that the ocean was only a half-day drive away!  Steve visited Truckee and the surrounding area when he was in America for an International Baking Expo and everything seemed to be falling into place.

By 2014 we could see the light at the end of the “immigration tunnel”. We put our home on the market and when it sold, we knew every penny of the profit was going to opening a restaurant in a far away place, where meat pies were virtually unknown. We moved in with Steve’s parents  and put Pie in the Sky on the market.

In early 2015 our second child was born (that’s right, Steve’s green card application took so long, we got pregnant AND had a baby in the time the paperwork took to process). We never stopped researching, planning and discussing our move. While discussing our move to Truckee with my dad, he pointed out some aspects of Truckee that may present challenges for us. For instance, we knew Truckee had a small year round population, but justified it with the population swell in the Summer and Winter. What we had not fully considered was how hard this fluctuation would affect staffing. We’d need so many staff in Summer, then virtually none in September and October, then a ton in Winter, then virtually none in April and May. Suddenly, it just didn’t add up. Our beautifully laid out plan to move to Truckee and stay with friends until we settled had completely vanished.