How Willamette Valley Pie’s CEO Austin Kelly leads by learning

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How Willamette Valley Pie’s CEO Austin Kelly leads by learning

20 Mar 2025

Mari Rydings

Mari Rydings is a versatile content creator, editor and marketer with experience developing dynamic, results-driven materials for B2B and B2C audiences. As the editorial director for Avant Food Media, she leads the day-to-day editorial operations for the company’s print and digital magazines, newsletters and social media platforms. Outside of work, she loves reading, hiking, putting together jigsaw puzzles and spending time with her husband and their twin daughters.

PORTLAND, OR — High school jobs are typically just a temporary means to an end. Yet on rare occasions, those early experiences ignite a fire to explore an unexpected career path. That’s exactly what happened to Austin Kelly, CEO of Portland, OR-based Willamette Valley Pie Co.

Kelly worked the cherry harvest in high school for a grower that supplied bakeries with fruit for pies and other desserts. Once the fruit left the orchard, though, it was pretty much out of sight, out of mind for him. That is, until he had the opportunity to peek behind the curtain, revealing the magic of manufacturing.

“No one really talks to kids about the CPG industry and food manufacturing, so I knew nothing about it,” Kelly shared. “The first time I saw how the fruit went from an orchard to a product on a store shelf, I fell in love. It was so exciting. There are so many pieces to the puzzle, from farmers to production, to the marketing and distribution aspects, to the retail shelves. It’s an amazing story.”

Having found his niche, Kelly earned a business management degree from Western Governors University and completed the Food Industry Executive Program at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business while working to gain hands-on experience in every aspect of the food industry, from quality and safety to supply chain to operations to marketing. He amassed a diverse range of experience in a relatively short amount of time, discovering a passion and talent for leadership and strategy along the way.

“I made sure I was always learning something new that would help others and give me a larger reach.” — Austin Kelly | CEO | Willamette Valley Pie Co.

He served as plant manager and director of operations at Fruithill Inc., before accepting a position as director of quality at Milwaukie, OR-based Dave’s Killer Bread during the company’s early years. He gained supply chain experience at Portland, OR-based Bridgetown Natural Foods and served as VP of operations at Baltimore-based Mason Dixie Foods.

“I realized that if I wanted to help people grow and make the largest impact I could, I needed to know about all of these moving pieces,” Kelly said. “I was very intentional about working across the different functions. I was always open to opportunities, and I maximized every second of learning. I made sure I was always learning something new that would help others and give me a larger reach.”

Kelly’s jack-of-all-trades background gave him the tools — and entrepreneurial mindset — the owners of Willamette Valley Pie were looking for in a new CEO. The irony of where he started to where he landed isn’t lost on him.

“It is quite serendipitous, certainly,” he said. “I always tell people I started in fruit and then spent about seven years in baking. When you put the two things together, you get pie.”

He took the helm in 2021, tasked with uncovering the company’s full potential. The challenge has allowed Kelly to flex his entrepreneurial muscles, a trait he quickly instilled in his team.

“I describe us as a 25-year-old startup,” he said. “We’re a mid-size emerging business — we have about 130 employees — that’s growing. We saw a tremendous amount of white space in the frozen pie category, in-store bakery, and for premium, hand-crafted, artisan desserts.”

The company didn’t find that white space by happenstance. Like most of what Kelly does, the discovery process was well-thought-out, intentional and grounded by two of his core business values: listening and learning. Not long after he stepped into his new role, Kelly launched an immersive consumer research project to determine why the company’s products were popular locally and how he could expand on that story to create a national presence.

“We sat down with folks who came into our retail store and cafe for a slice of pie and asked them questions and got their feedback,” Kelly said. “We also did surveys and panels and really took a deep dive into understanding what people care about and what they like about our pie. Then we took those learnings and used them to inform our product development, innovation cycle and marketing.”

This story has been adapted from the February | Q1 2025 issue of Commercial Baking. Read the full story in the digital edition here.