First Posted: 3/17/2015
CLARKS SUMMIT — As customers entered Gerrity’s Supermarket in Clarks Summit on March 14, bakery manager Charles Williams asked, “Would you like a free slice of pie for National Pi Day?”
Gerrity’s celebrated National Pi Day on March 14 by giving away a free slice of apple pie to every customer who visited one of nine locations between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m.
“This is the first year I’ve ever done this and I’ve been here for seven years now,” Williams said. “(The customers) love it. This will be the only day you’ll have these numbers come in. I think it’s a great idea for Gerrity’s supermarkets to hand out slices of pie to customers. It also shows appreciation to your customers who shop with you every day.”
The bakery staff in Clarks Summit was busy that day. “We’ve given out a total of 52 apple pies,” Williams said shortly after 3 p.m. “We baked more than 100 pies for this.”
In a promotional email, the Greek letter π (pronounced “pie”, but spelled pi), according to Joseph Fasula, co-owner of Gerrity’s Supermarkets, is used to calculate the area and circumference of a circle. The mathematical value of Pi is approximately 3.14, which corresponds on the calendar to March 14. This year marks a very special Pi Day that only occurs once a century where the first 10 digits of Pi are 3.141592653, which will exactly match the time on March 14, 2015 at 9:26:53.
“It came to my attention last year and I thought it would be a great way to create some excitement in our stores. I put it in my calendar and we began planning it about two months ago,” Fasula said in an email interview.
Gerrity’s also ran a contest all week on its social media platforms, where participants could win a free apple pie if they correctly calculated the area and circumference of Gerrity’s freshly baked eight inch apple pie.
“Celebrating Pi day is a continuation of the fun we still like to have at Gerrity’s,” Fasula said. “At Gerrity’s, we love food and we love to have fun with food. My father, who was responsible for taking Gerrity’s from one small meat market to nine supermarkets, was always looking for ways to create excitement for our employees and customers.”