Not long ago, no one had heard of golden-tongued YouTuber James Wright “Chanel,” who burst onto the scene last week with a musical review of Patti LaBelle’s sweet potato pie.
To say he went viral is an understatement — to date, the video has been
seen more than 1 million times. And ever since that video spread like
wildfire, Walmart — which developed the pie with LaBelle and sells it
exclusively — has been struggling to keep up with demand. Everyone wants
a slice of Ms. LaBelle’s silky, autumnal pie. A
Walmart in Valley Stream, N.Y., which still shows online that they have
the pies in stock, is actually sold out. “Since Saturday,” a
salesperson said. “The warehouse is also sold out. You can thank Mr.
James for that."
Halfway across the country, a Walmart store clerk in Kalamazoo, Mich.,
told Yahoo Food that the pies are selling so fast that she doesn’t have
time to put dates and prices on them; she just hands them to waiting
customers. According to the clerk, the store sold 120 cases of the sweet
potato pie on Sunday — a sharp uptick since Wright posted his video.
Apparently the pies were "not selling” before the clip went viral.
“Check back Wednesday or Thursday,” the clerk suggested, adding with a
note of caution, “call before you come.”
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| Photo Credit: Walmart. |
Walmart representative John Forrest Ales confirmed to Yahoo Food that
the sweet potato pies are selling like hot cakes (er, pies) at locations
across the country. “For 72 hours, we were selling one per second,” he
told us. Ales wouldn’t go into specifics about sales figures, but at
$3.48 a pie, that works out to just under $1 million in sales over the
weekend. The pie’s product page is currently the most-visited food site
on Walmart.com, Ales said. (For a bit of context, Walmart might sell two
pumpkin pies every second in the month of November. But still, $1
million in sweet potato pie sales is a lot of pie). Walmart was caught off-guard by the frenzy, Ales said. “Friday
morning, the team was working with the [sweet potato pie] supplier to
see how we can keep up with the demand,” Ales said. “The supplier… was
having a hard time finding [enough] sweet potatoes. So we walked down
the hall to the produce department [and said,] ‘We need about 2 million
pounds of California sweet potatoes!’ So that’s what we’ve been working
through.”Ales
added that Walmart is working hard to replenish stocks at sold-out
locations. “We’re really sorry about that,” he said. “We’re looking at
where stores are out and how we can quickly move pies to that area.”
Meanwhile, Patti LaBelle has already chatted personally with Wright. The YouTuber recounted the telephone call to BET
over the weekend: “She kept thanking me and she kept telling me how
much she loved me. She kept telling me to be me,” Wright said. “She was
like ‘Boy, you can sang!’“
Walmart
followed suit, welcoming Wright to one of their stores over the
weekend. Ales wouldn’t comment on whether or not the chain might
consider using the viral video star in a commercial, saying only, “We
definitely are thanking him … We love customers’ feedback. And such
entertaining feedback is always fun.”-Yahoo-
When God decides it's your turn to shine, you will shine brighter than the stars.
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