MANCHESTER, NH – Long before there was a storefront on Elm Street, before wholesale accounts and ribbon cuttings, Lauren Collins Cline was just someone who probably shouldn’t have been in the kitchen.
Her first pie – a basic apple pie recipe from Williams-Sonoma for Thanksgiving in 2002, was a leap of faith.
“I didn’t know how to cook,” says Collins Cline, punctuating that statement with the smile of someone who’s come a long way. “I was just somebody who should not be in the kitchen.”
But her parents loved the pie. And that was enough.
“That validation… made me want to do another one, and then another one,” says Collins Cline. It was fitting that among her first official customers on March 26, were her parents, Brenda and Terry Collins, who made the trip from Connecticut.
“Two decades later, that first pie has quietly evolved into a brand – Slightly Crooked Pies, developed through the support and encouragement of her pie-hungry friends and, by association, an growing and enthusiastic pie constituency.
Her new shop on Elm Street is rooted as much in nostalgia and community as it is in her signature recipes.
For years, baking remained a personal passion, something Collins Cline shared at gatherings and holidays. The shift toward business came almost accidentally in 2018, when her friend, Marlana Trombley, suggested she’d pay for a pie.
Collins Cline put out a casual call for Christmas orders. She made about a dozen pies, charging $10 each.
“People threw 20s at me and said, ‘Charge more,’” she said.
Seasonal orders followed. Then came the pandemic.
That Thanksgiving, as families stayed apart, something changed. Requests came in from people she’d never met, people who couldn’t travel to be with loved ones but still wanted something that felt like home.
“I just want a homemade pie for Thanksgiving,” she recalled customers saying. “That was really the turning point.”
Soon after, she registered the business as an LLC, began selling at the Joppa Hill Farmstand near her home in Bedford, and steadily built a following—almost entirely by word of mouth, a point of pride for her husband, Drew Cline, who was on hand for the grand opening to pitch in as needed.
“She’s never spent a dime on advertising,” he said, of the trajectory of Slightly Crooked Pies. “I knew, from that very first Thanksgiving order, that this was going to become something more than a hobby, because it made everyone so happy – including her, and just seeing the joy that she got from making these pies, and making other people happy. It was clear from the beginning there was nothing else like this on the market.”
Collins Cline’s approach to pie is both simple and deliberate.
She starts with tradition—her original apple pie recipe still forms the backbone—but she layers in refinement. Less sugar. More balance. Subtle flavors that elevate without overwhelming.
“The big tell for me was watching Lauren experiment with recipes and create her own, until she got it to the quality she wanted and she imagined it could be. And when she finally got it right – and there was a lot of experimentation in this recipes, a lot of trial and error – to watch the joy of the creative process in her, creating new flavors that nobody else is doing, or adding a little twist on a common flavor, was magical,” Cline said.
Her cherry pie, for example, is intentionally not the syrupy-sweet version many expect. It’s deep and rich, and her husband’s favorite.
“It’s not for everyone,” he said. “If you’re used to a super sweet cherry pie, you’re probably not going to like this.”
Instead, her pie recipe leans deeper and richer, with notes of cinnamon, nutmeg and orange zest.
She is always open for suggestions. Family members routinely suggest new combinations—like the cherry coconut that combines her husband’s two favorite flavors, or a cherry “Old Fashioned” with bourbon and citrus at her father’s request —and Collins Cline takes them all to heart.
“She just does this stuff for the joy of it,” Cline said. “But then she perfects it to the point that it’s really amazingly good.”
Part of the appeal, Collins Cline says, is that pie allows for imperfection in a way other desserts don’t.
“I think one of the reasons pie resonates for me is that it doesn’t have to be perfect to be perfect,” she said. “You’re going to cut it up as soon as it hits the table—who’s going to notice?”
That ethos extends to the name itself – Slightly Crooked Pies – and to the feel of the shop, which is intentionally warm, familiar and just a little bit nostalgic.
“I wanted you to feel like you’re sitting in your grandmother’s kitchen,” she said.
Collins Cline says there was also great intention in deciding on where to set up shop. She didn’t just want a pie shop; it had to fit her vision.
‘It all just fell together. In my head I wanted to be on Elm Street and I wanted to be in Manchester. A lot of people asked me, ‘Why not Bedford?’” she said. “Because that’s not the feel of my shop. I wanted it to be this nostalgic downtown place.”
One of the things she carried with her from her childhood was the memory of a bakery in Waterbury, Connecticut, one that inspired and informed her as she made a space of her own.
“It was called Helen’s Bakery. I’d go in with my mom and press my face up against the glass – and it had been largely unchanged over the last 50-60 years. That left such an imprint on me that I wanted to recreate that in my own version,” Collins Cline said.
Which is why she chose the spot located at the Signature on Elm building, part of a stretch north of burgeoning Bridge Street, because she believes in the city’s trajectory.
“Manchester has to move north if it’s going to continue growing,” she said. “I believe in what’s happening here.”
The space itself came together organically. After first touring it last summer and deciding she wasn’t ready, the opportunity resurfaced in the fall.
This time, it felt different.
“I walked through it again and realized—it’s time,” she said.
To make it happen, Collins Cline cashed out part of her retirement savings.
“This is my retirement,” she said. “This is it.
Inside the shop, that sense of purpose extends beyond the pies.
Collins Cline has built a small team that includes family members and local hires —people she chose less for experience and more for presence.
For one, her former colleague at Catholic Medical Center and former Director of the city’s Health Department, Tim Soucy, is working for her.
“He always said he’d work for me someday when I opened my pie shop – and so, he is,” she says.
Step-son Rohan is also on the payroll, and son, Sebastian, 13, will be pitching in on weekends. Collins Clines notes that he has also been dabbling in pie-baking, and may be following in her footsteps, after they both were named best overall in last year’s Great NH Pie Festival in Milton.
Rounding out the crew are Ariana Williams, who popped her head in the door while the shop was still under construction to see if there were any job openings, and Nathan Martino, who is pie-baking apprentice.
“Ari is a talented artist in her own right. She looks you in the eye, shakes your hand—that was enough for me,” Collins Cline said. “I’m so, so blessed in that department,” she says. “Through this whole process I’ve heard the same thing from everyone: ‘I just want to be part of this, whatever this is.’”
That “whatever this is” has quickly become something more than a storefront—it’s a gathering place, a creative outlet, and, for Collins Cline, a way to give back to the community she’s come to love.
Her life’s journey has brought her to a place where she’s less career-focused and more life-focused. Finding her entrepreneurial spirit meant letting go of her preconceived ideas of business ownership. It’s something she imagined would be too much hassle and responsibility.
“And then it dawned on me that owning a business is about helping shape the community you want to be a part of,” she says. “When I started to look at it through that lense, it became a lot more exciting – and I’ve had wonderful jobs in my life, after TV news [at NECN] I went to Eversource, and Catholic Medical Center and then, Montagne Powers, and all along the way I met the most amazing people. But I also got to the point where I just couldn’t satisfy that itch to create something and contribute to the community that I was going to be a part of.”
Getting to the grand opening isn’t the finish line for Collins Cline.
“I didn’t start a business today – I’ve been growing one,” she said.
Looking ahead, she hopes to expand wholesale production, potentially open a second location, and explore opportunities in tourist markets like Portsmouth or Newburyport.
For now, though, the focus is simpler: figuring out how many pies to bake each week, and not staying up until 11 p.m. making more.
If someone had told her in 2018 that it would take eight years to open a shop, Collins Cline isn’t sure she would have believed them.
Instead, she took it one step at a time – her final leap of faith was stepping away from her day job. Standing behind the counter of her own Elm Street shop, she says she feels like she’s landed in a place she was always meant to be.
“I already have everything I could ever want – an amazing family, wonderful friends, she says. “Change is scary but we’re doing it together, Drew and I, which I think is really important. If you don’t have change, you don’t have growth, you don’t get a pie shop on Elm Street – and that would be tragic,” she says, the joy oozing forth like that first slice of a still-warm cherry pie as it hits the plate.
Slightly Crooked Pies is located at 1209 Elm St. Monday and Tuesday are baking days, which includes the pies Collins Cline wholesales through local shops including Angela’s Pasta & Cheese, Loon Chocolate, Coffeeberries in Londonderry and gluten-free items through Dishon Bakery on Elm Street. Shop hours are Wed. -Fri., 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and “Sundays, maybe,” says Collins Cline.