Derby-Pie and Kern's Kitchen: How a Louisville Family Bakery Guards Kentucky's Most Famous Dessert

A Pie That Is Also a Legal Asset

If you search for "derby pie," most of the results are recipes. Almost none of them are for Derby-Pie. That gap is the story of a small Louisville bakery that turned a restaurant dessert into one of Kentucky's best-known food brands, then spent decades making sure nobody else could sell anything under its name.

Kern's Kitchen makes one famous product, a chocolate nut pie sold as Derby-Pie®, plus a Golden Pecan pie it added in 2010. It bakes them in a Jeffersontown plant on Ampere Drive, ships them nationwide, and sells them through Kentucky grocery stores. It is listed in our food and beverage directory, alongside Louisville's other packaged-food makers.

The name, spelled with a hyphen and a capital P, is a registered trademark, and the family has defended it in federal court since the early 1980s. That is why a Louisville restaurant menu in May is more likely to list a "chocolate nut pie" or a "Kentucky bourbon pie" than a "derby pie."

1954: The Melrose Inn and a Name From a Hat

The pie began as a restaurant dessert. According to the company's history page, Walter and Leaudra Kern moved to Louisville in 1953 to help their daughter Mary. Starting in 1954, they co-managed the Melrose Inn, a restaurant in Prospect, with their son George. A memoir by a family friend on the Kentucky to the World blog places the inn on US 42.

The Kerns wanted a signature dessert. Louisville Water Company, which profiled the bakery in April 2026, says they settled on a chocolate and nut pie with a buttery, flaky crust, then asked friends and family for name ideas and drew one from a hat. The pie was created, named and first sold at the Melrose Inn in 1954, according to the company history.

Not every account agrees on the year. A 2015 NPR story by Nina Feldman said the family created the pie in 1950. The company, Louisville Water and Wikipedia all give 1954, and the bakery marked the pie's 70th anniversary in 2024, WAVE News reported. We use 1954.

The Kerns managed the Melrose Inn until 1961, according to the company timeline, but kept supplying the restaurant with Derby-Pie until the inn closed in 2000. The pie was already selling in volume by then: the timeline marks 1960 as the year the family passed 1,000 pies sold.

From a Farmhouse Kitchen to an Industrial Park

The company history reads like a record of oven upgrades:

• Until 1971: pies were baked three at a time at the Hershey Farmhouse in Prospect, mixed in a five-quart KitchenAid.
• 1971: the family moved production to a house at 125 Arterburn Drive and turned a screened-in porch into a production kitchen.
• 1975: a Vulcan convection oven doubled capacity.
• 1981: the pie moved beyond Louisville through a distributor.
• 1983: the bakery moved into 2,000 square feet at 408 Production Court, with an 80-pie rotary tray oven and an 80-quart mixer. It doubled that space to 4,000 square feet in 1995.
• 2014: production moved to the current kitchen at 2420 Ampere Drive. Its first Derby season there was 2015.

George Kern died in 1967, Walter Kern in 1977 and Leaudra Kern in 1982, according to the same timeline. Their grandson Alan Rupp, Mary's son, began working in the business during Derby season in 1973 and went on to run it for five decades.

The current plant is a different scale of operation. The company's about page says Kern's has gone from baking three pies at a time in a home oven to 240 at a time in three commercial ovens. In its busy season, the Jeffersontown facility bakes 1,800 to 2,400 pies a day, Louisville Water reported. In 2024, Alan Rupp put Derby-season volume at "somewhere around that 50,000 mark," which he called "a very rough area," according to WAVE.

Some of the work is still done by hand. The company says it cracks its own eggs and hand-sorts its nuts, according to its about page. Louisville Water's profile adds a detail about the dough, which is made on Mondays. Employees fill large buckets with tap water the night before and let it chill overnight, because cold water keeps the fat from spreading too fast and gives a thicker, flakier crust. Co-owner Rebecca Rupp told the utility that Leaudra Kern used Louisville tap water for the dough about 70 years ago, and that "Louisville Pure Tap is something that goes into making our dough, which happens to be my favorite part."

Kern's has kept production under its own roof for seven decades. Food founders weighing the alternative can start with our guide to Louisville co-packers and contract manufacturers.

The Trademark: Applied for in 1964, Registered in 1969

The Kerns treated the name as property early. According to the company timeline, they applied for state and federal trademark protection in 1964, and Kern's Kitchen received a federal registration on the Principal Register of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in 1969. Some accounts, including Louisville Water's profile and one passage of Wikipedia's entry, give 1968 instead. A 2021 analysis by the law firm Dorsey & Whitney gives 1969.

The company's trademark page says the registration is meant to assure customers that when they see "Derby-Pie®" with the registered symbol, they are buying the pie made only by Kern's Kitchen. The page says the company prefers to settle disputes informally but "will resort to litigation if necessary."

That last line is not a bluff. In 2008 the company's lawyer, Don Cox, estimated that Kern's had gone to court about 25 times to protect the name, according to the Wikipedia entry, which cites the Frankfort State Journal.

Four Decades of Enforcement

The cookbook and the magazine

The company's timeline credits Federal Judge Charles M. Allen with issuing its first enforcement order. Wikipedia, citing the Encyclopedia of Louisville, says that in April 1982 a federal judge ruled against a local cookbook and ordered it recalled so its derby pie recipe page could be removed.

The biggest early test came against Bon Appétit. Kern's sued the magazine over a "derby pie" recipe that ran first in the magazine and then in a hardback book, NPR reported. In May 1987, a federal judge in Louisville ruled that "derby pie" had become a generic term, which would have meant anyone could use it. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversed, finding that the magazine "failed to introduce scientific survey evidence" that the public saw "derby pie" as generic, according to Wikipedia's summary. Because the appeals court found the magazine had not presented enough evidence, the case would have gone to trial. Bon Appétit settled instead, NPR reported.

Restaurants and diners

NPR's 2015 story described two Kentucky restaurants. Science Hill Inn, a Shelbyville restaurant, got a cease-and-desist letter, dropped the name and changed its menu to a chocolate pecan pie. "We were threatened," said Susan Fouts, who worked there as a hostess for 24 years. "And we never, never mentioned 'derby pie' again."

Rick Paul, who has managed the White Light Diner in Frankfort since 1991, was sued by Kern's in 1997 and again in 2007, according to NPR. He told the network he still owed $14,000 in legal fees. His diner sold a "Kentucky Bourbon Pie" and at one point advertised an "I Can't Call It Derby Pie" pie.

Recipe sites and the web

In May 2013, the Electronic Frontier Foundation inducted Kern's Kitchen into its Takedown Hall of Shame. EFF said the company had targeted restaurants that list derby pie on their menus, magazines that print derby pie recipes and individual websites posting recipes, and had gone to hosts such as WordPress.com. EFF's point was that these were trademark claims over the name, not copyright claims over the recipe. Recipes, it noted, generally are not covered by U.S. copyright, so a site that publishes the same pie under a different name is in the clear.

The Courier-Journal case

The family's most recent major case went the other way. On May 6, 2017, the Courier-Journal published a recipe for a chocolate-walnut bourbon pie from Captain's Quarters, a Louisville restaurant, under a headline using "Derby pie." Days later, Alan Rupp sent the paper a letter claiming knowing infringement. On June 22, 2017, the paper profiled a Louisville baker who made a "Derby Pie" macaron. Rupp sued the paper for trademark infringement, according to the Sixth Circuit's opinion in Rupp v. Courier-Journal.

The district court dismissed all the claims. On January 11, 2021, a three-judge Sixth Circuit panel affirmed in an unpublished opinion. The court held that the newspaper had not used the phrase as a trademark at all. "As used in the article, 'Derby pie' simply informs the reader of the type of pie," the court wrote, and the paper used it "in a 'wholly descriptive manner.'" The articles named their actual sources, Captain's Quarters and an independent baker, and the recipe was different from Kern's, with bourbon and no vanilla.

Dorsey & Whitney noted that the opinion sits uneasily with the court's 1988 ruling in the Bon Appétit case, and suggested that "perhaps the mark lost its uniqueness in the intervening three decades, and now approaches generic status." That is commentary, not a holding, and the registration remains in force. But the decision drew a clear line: describing a type of pie is not the same as selling one under someone else's brand.

What "Derby Pie" Recipes Online Actually Are

If you came here looking for a recipe, this is the honest answer. Kern's Kitchen has never published its recipe. Its trademark page calls the recipe a secret, and Wikipedia says only a small group of family members and one employee know it. Every "derby pie recipe" you find online is someone's approximation of the style, and many of them differ from Kern's in basic ways.

The version most cooks know is, in NPR's description, an embellished pecan pie: a sweet, sticky filling with bourbon and chocolate chips, topped with nuts, in a pastry crust. Kern's pie is "made without bourbon, and it uses walnuts instead of pecans," NPR reported. The Courier-Journal recipe at the center of the 2021 case was a chocolate-walnut pie with bourbon. An exhibit quoted in the Sixth Circuit opinion puts the company's position on the difference this way: "If you buy something called Derby-Pie®, you know it's made by Kern's Kitchen and will have walnuts and vanilla."

Because of the trademark, recipe writers and restaurants use other names. Common ones include:

• Chocolate nut pie or chocolate walnut pie, which is what Kern's itself calls the product on its own store.
• Chocolate pecan pie or Kentucky bourbon pie, the names Science Hill Inn and the White Light Diner moved to, per NPR.
• May Day pie, a nod to the Derby's spot on the first Saturday in May, and Pegasus pie, after the Kentucky Derby Festival's Pegasus Parade, both listed by Wikipedia.

New Orleans food lawyer Liz Williams told NPR that the name "became so synonymous with the product that now it is a word." That is the whole tension: the public uses "derby pie" to describe a dessert, while Kern's treats it as one company's brand.

If you are a home cook, you can bake a chocolate nut pie under any name you like in your own kitchen. If you plan to sell one, the name matters. Kentucky home bakers working under the state's cottage food rules should read our guide to Kentucky cottage food law and leave "Derby-Pie" off the label.

Who Owns Kern's Kitchen Now

Kern's Kitchen is still family-owned. The company describes itself as a fourth-generation, family-owned business. Alan Rupp, the third generation to lead it, died in June 2024, according to the company history.

Two of Alan Rupp's three children took over officially in January 2025, just before the Derby rush, WAVE reported in April 2025. The station identified Rebecca Rupp as president and Matt Rupp as owner. "We try to keep it just as homemade as the way our great-grandmother did it," Matt Rupp told WAVE. Louisville Water's April 2026 profile describes Rebecca Rupp as a co-owner.

How Derby-Pie Is Sold

Kern's sells the pie three ways, according to derbypie.com:

• Online, with nationwide shipping year-round. A single Derby-Pie chocolate nut pie was listed at $35 in late 2026, with two-pie bundles at $70 and free ice-packed shipping on the bundles.
• Kentucky grocery stores and regional attractions, per the about page, though the online store locator listed no retailers when we checked.
• Food service. The family friend's account on Kentucky to the World says the bakery once delivered to 13 restaurants and one retail store, and now sells through Sysco and Gordon Food Service as well as online.

Derby Season

The name ties the pie to one weekend, and the business still runs on that calendar. The company's timeline dates its partnership with the Kentucky Derby Festival to 1990, and its website calls Derby-Pie the official pie of the festival.

Spring is when the plant runs flat out. "Derby is such a viral moment for this time of year," Alan Rupp told WAVE in 2024. The company also markets the pie for Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter, which spreads demand beyond the first Saturday in May.

For more makers in this category, browse the food and beverage directory. For Kentucky's other famous family brand, read our story on Brown-Forman.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is Derby-Pie trademarked?

The Kern family, who created the pie at the Melrose Inn in Prospect, Kentucky, in 1954, applied for trademark protection in 1964, and their company Kern's Kitchen received a federal registration in 1969. The trademark means only Kern's Kitchen may sell a pie under the name Derby-Pie. The company says the registration assures customers they are getting its pie and not an imitation.

Can I make a derby pie at home?

Yes. Trademark law governs the use of a brand name in selling goods, and recipes are generally not protected by copyright, so baking a chocolate nut pie in your own kitchen is not a problem. The issue arises when someone sells or advertises a product under the Derby-Pie name. Restaurants and bakers usually call their versions chocolate nut pie, Kentucky bourbon pie, May Day pie or Pegasus pie.

What is in a real Derby-Pie?

Kern's Kitchen keeps its recipe secret. It describes the product as a chocolate nut pie with a buttery, flaky crust. Reporting and court records indicate it uses walnuts and vanilla and contains no bourbon. Most derby pie recipes online are different: they tend to use pecans, chocolate chips and bourbon.

Has Kern's Kitchen ever lost a Derby-Pie lawsuit?

Yes. In 2021 a federal appeals court affirmed the dismissal of Alan Rupp's lawsuit against the Courier-Journal, which had published a chocolate-walnut bourbon pie recipe under a Derby pie headline. The court found the newspaper used the phrase only to describe a type of pie. Earlier, Kern's prevailed on appeal against Bon Appetit after a judge had ruled the name generic, and the magazine settled.

Who owns Kern's Kitchen today?

Kern's Kitchen is still owned and run by the descendants of Walter and Leaudra Kern. After Alan Rupp, the founders' grandson, died in June 2024, his children Rebecca Rupp and Matt Rupp took over in January 2025. Rebecca Rupp serves as president, and the company describes itself as a fourth-generation family business.

Where is Derby-Pie made and how can I buy one?

Derby-Pie is baked at the Kern's Kitchen plant on Ampere Drive in Jeffersontown, in the Louisville area, where the bakery makes 1,800 to 2,400 pies a day in its busy season. You can order it online with nationwide shipping or buy it at Kentucky grocery stores and regional attractions.