A few weeks before Thanksgiving, shoppers looking for just a few slices of pie face a seasonal frustration. Whole pies are readily available and reasonably affordable at places like Costco, where a pumpkin pie still runs somewhere around $6 to $7. At a local bakery, though, a whole pie costs $30 to $50, and finding pie sold by the slice takes some searching.

Even apart from the price, a whole pie may not suit the table. A family with several different taste preferences might want two or three slices of several kinds rather than one whole pumpkin pie. Nearly every from-scratch bakery, however, treats Thanksgiving as whole-pie-only season, leaving those households looking for smaller portions elsewhere.

The slices do exist, just not always at the bakeries most people check first. Several grocery chains sell pie by the slice or half pie from the bakery case: Whole Foods offers half pies for around $10, PCC sells individual slices starting around $3.50 with a rotating selection that includes marionberry, apple, and pumpkin, and Central Market and Met Market both carry slices and half pies as well. For something more local, a small South Seattle shop called Baked From the Hart sells individual mini pies, not the cheapest option on this list, but a homemade one.

That pattern follows the way most bakeries plan for the holiday: whole pies are easier to produce, price, and pre-order at scale than individual slices sold out of a case, and demand is high enough around Thanksgiving that a bakery does not need to accommodate smaller asks to sell out anyway.

Skipping the grocery-store bakery case may mean accepting a compromise rather than continuing the search for a pie shop selling exactly the assortment the table wants. One approach is to buy an affordable whole pie for volume, then splurge on a single nicer pie and slice it to cover the range of tastes at the table. Another is to ask whoever wants a specific flavor to bring their own.