Singer Patti LaBelle’s Walmart exclusive sweet potato pies got an extra boost from an unexpected source. Thanks to a viral video posted last week, the pies are starting to sell out.
On Nov. 12, Facebook user James Wright posted a video review of the pie. The LaBelle fan was so in love with the pies that he told his viewers that they might turn into Patti LaBelle after eating a piece. At the end of the video, he tells everyone to go buy the pie at Walmart. If it wasn’t for his use of some adult language, you might be convinced that he was paid by the retailer.
But Walmart didn’t have to pay him at all to see Wright’s video turn into sales. A Walmart rep told Yahoo Food that during the first 72 hours after the video went viral, stores were selling one per second. Since each pie costs $3.48, that would mean that Walmart sold around $1 million word of pies. That’s a lot of pies.
“Friday morning, the team was working with the [sweet potato pie] supplier to see how we can keep up with the demand,” Walmart rep John Forrest Ales told Yahoo. “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.”
Wright’s video has earned 9 million views on Facebook and 1.9 million on YouTube.