Cookies.....Final Chapter

Our biggest holiday was Valentine’s Day. We literally would start on the 13th at 4am for the 13th and continue on through the 14th. We never went home and never slept. It was mind-boggling. We had to stop orders at 200. We physically could not deliver or make more than 200 orders (5 cookies each unless it was a basket which had far more) for 1 day. Remember we never used day-old cookies to go out. So we worked our asses off that week and then took the 15th off to sleep. And boy did we sleep. It was sheer exhaustion. All employees worked their asses off so we all needed the 15th off. Bonuses for everyone and much-needed sleep.

We weren’t growing as much as we'd like now and we weren't sure if we had more growth in us, This was not a big city maybe this was all we could do. Or did we need to go in a different direction? Did we want to open in another city? What could we do? And more importantly, how could we do it all, and did we even really want to?
We were burned out. Running your own business is 24/7.  It took a real toll on our relationship which had changed now from just friendship to being a couple.

One evening we went to have a few drinks after work to discuss our next move.
As we sat at the bar we drank, chatted, and then saw some people pointing towards us and talking and then quickly looking away. I said to Rick that he was wearing a company T-shirt so maybe they were talking about that. We hoped they didn't come over to chat. We wanted to be left alone. I know that sounds bad but it was how we felt at that moment in time.
We noticed that they kept looking at us and then looking away.  It was a bit annoying but we didn’t stop sucking down the Long Island Ice Teas and Long Island Lemonades.

After a couple of cocktails, a woman comes over to us and asks if we work at The Cookie Mug. We say we do indeed. She said, “OH MY GOD WE LOVE THOSE COOKIES!!”
Rick said, "Thank you" and turned around on his stool but that didn't stop her from talking. 
She asked if he was the baker. Instead of saying yes for some reason, he said, “I am one of the owners and this is my partner”  We didn't usually say that. We preferred hearing honestly what people had to say.  They suck up if you're an owner so why he did that even he doesn't know.
As he says that to her she yells down the bar to the other people that we own it and before you know it they are buying us drinks. Telling us stories of who got what in their office. Who loves the spiced oatmeal raisin cookies or what do we put in those chocolate chip cookies that make them so good?
One had just come in the store and just bought a basket. The young man told us what he had received for his birthday at work. It was the mug with all the different breasts on it. I was worried he was going to say he got in trouble being this was sent to his office. But instead, he said it was so funny that everyone came by to read it. (it really was funny – cartoon like not real pictures and it had funny descriptions)

They insisted on buying us a round. We let them.
We had some leftover cookies in the car that we were going to give to our neighbors.
Rick stood up and said to everyone, “I’ll be right back.”
I knew what he was going to do as soon as he got up.
He came back in with about 14 cookies and they went crazy. (1 cookie was equal to 4 regular-size cookies) The bartender ate a chocolate chip and moaned. He didn’t allow us to pay for the rest of the evening.  Okay, nice perk. So much for discussing our business plans! But again just when we think we are exhausted and can't do all this anymore we get a jolt of energy from things like this and off we go.

We eventually decided the only way to grow was to franchise. A lot of work was done to get that going believe you me. More trips to the library as well. Writing the training manual was a painfully long painful process for me. Painful!  (did I say painful enough?)  I would always find a distraction to not finish it. Finally, Rick kidnapped me and took me to the beach with a beach bag of work. We sat there all day until it was in its rough draft form and ready to be proofed and printed.  I HATED doing that type of work. But he baked and did the books.
I did everything else so the manual had to be written by mostly me.

When ready we sold our first 2 franchises. 

We did not like it from the get-go.
What a damn headache! It’s like babysitting adult children.
Here is what I do not get for the life of me.
They buy this because it is a successful business and you have a successful model.
They pay good money for this. Why not listen to the people who were successful and started this? When you buy a franchise you get trained in every facet of the business. Marketing, baking, inventory, product design, employee hiring. location and HR issues etc. We help them find a location and they have to adhere to what the franchisor deems acceptable. They pay us a royalty. So why the hell wouldn't you listen?

The first one fought us tooth and nail on everything.
As I stated above it was adult babysitting.
They did everything they weren’t supposed to do.
They didn’t open on time or sometimes not at all.
They used day-old cookies. They did so many things wrong it made our heads spin.
We even did sales calls for them and then they didn’t follow through and lost free TV advertising because of their unprofessionalism. I was floored, frustrated, and darn right pissed off.  Rick spent days in that city working with them to no avail. They did not want to work that hard was their quote. Where was this attitude when you told us you wanted this business so much over the course of a year? This was discussed and they apparently only gave us the answers we wanted to hear. But why would you spend the money then? 

Just because it’s a franchise doesn’t mean you don’t work. C’mon, no business is a success without keeping your doors open, answering your phones, and working it! Just because it’s a franchise does not mean it will be a success if you only open the doors. You can’t slack on the product or marketing of said product. You don't buy a Subway and then not use fresh luncheon meat or just not open every day. That may be a well-known product but it wouldn't be able to stay a viable business for long.  

The whole thing boggled my mind.
This really got my misanthropic nature going full force at this time of my life.

At this point in time we were featured in a national business franchising magazine. Rick was on the cover. I have it hanging in my office.
Rick and I were so burned out we were no longer happy doing any of this.
But we didn’t show it in that article.
I hated cookies with a passion. I just couldn’t stand the site of any of this.
I was tired, Rick was tired, and it was not good for us as a couple most importantly.

Running your own business is 24/7 if done right.
It took a big toll on our relationship now that we were a couple.
Living together, working together, and being with your partner 24/7 is too much.
It was stressful.
You are the last to be paid.
With the growth needed at the beginning, there are money issues unless you have a large sum of money. No bank would lend us money because they never heard of such a thing, this was a high risk to them. We were young and we had no experience we were told. 

We started with only $40.00  to buy supplies and off we went.  

We had no choice.
Those beginnings were very tough.
You need money to grow so all the money goes back into the business.
Then at the end when we had the money banks called us.
How ass backward was that logic?
This was a tough gig but I am still very proud of us. But we were certainly not rich.  

As we were contemplating our next move we got a call at the office.
Someone approached us about buying our business. We heard them out.
At the same time, a person from Seattle had contacted Rick after seeing the story in the magazine article mentioned earlier. He asked Rick if he had any interest in working with other franchisors and offered him a job and invited him out to Seattle to meet and discuss this opportunity.

Rick kept the door open but it wasn’t the right time. We instead pursued the sale of the company. As it got closer Rick called this person in Seattle and they flew us out there to meet with them. They offered him a job after the 2nd day. They knew we were selling and it would be awhile but they would wait. So back home we flew and completed the sale.

It was bittersweet to finalize the sale of the business. 
The flagship store was still a big success.
The new owners wanted nothing to do with franchising so they became independent and it worked out great for them. Their names had to be changed but otherwise, they could do what they wanted. They both failed within the year we were told. We were not surprised.

The new owners kept things the same for a couple of months.
Then we started getting calls from old customers, (radio station owners who became friends, old employees, family, etc) They said the cookies were small now and they were horrible tasting and more often than not stale. 

We heard horrendous things, even about their new location. (I can't say where here for fear of some type of retribution). By now there was the internet and we looked online and read horrible reviews. Everything about it had changed and not for the better. We weren’t supposed to care but it did bug us.
It was our baby....but we had to let go. It became easier the longer we were away from it.

One holiday we went home to visit family.
My sister Pam had invited us to meet her and her husband at a local pub.
We met up with them and they introduced us to some people at their table.
The conversation was flowing nicely when someone said, “Pam I got one of those Cookie Mugs and they were horrible. What happened? Didn’t you used to work there?”
My sister said, “The owners sold it and the new owners have really changed everything.” Rick and I looked at one another and were thankful she didn't bring us into this.
But she had to go and add, “This is the original couple that used to own it.”
Oh my goodness.  Everyone gathered around and asked us questions. How did you get them so moist? Can we have the recipes?  Oh, brother.

We had to listen to all this whether we wanted to or not.
All the stories went on about what they received and what so and so sent.
Oh my goodness we were so glad to be out of this and that point really hit home. 
It was all so negative about what it had become and that truly made us feel badly. But yet at the same time, we didn't care.

It was our baby and our baby had run amok, it was now a juvenile delinquent so ugly and negative. We both will admit that it still bothers us. But not living there and having to hear this all the time was nice. We wanted these people to get off the subject. We kept trying to steer the conversation and asking them questions like, "What do you do Bob?"  "We live in Seattle and it's so beautiful there"  We tried all angles and finally the waitress came by and that was our saving grace.

That company is out of business altogether now.
We no longer own that name or trademark and have seen that other companies have used that name now. We know this because we were sent the paperwork when it was about to expire. We discussed if we were going to keep it and renew but why? We wanted a clean cut. So we let the trademark go. I went online when writing this to see the trademark and see when it was first implemented and the year we let it go. 
We want no part of it because of what it had become.
Besides there are several companies I understand that use that name for their products.
Not necessarily similar but some are.

A funny thing happened after we sold. We were packing up our offices and a sales rep that we really had become friends with swore she hated chocolate chip cookies.  She came in to say goodbye.
She not only loved our cookies when she was there she’d always eat at least two.
She would ask for some cookie dough for the road to eat as well.
She was a cookie-eating machine. She swore there was a secret ingredient.
She thought it was hazelnut in the chocolate chip cookies. (it was not!)

She came into the kitchen/bakery and grabbed a cookie as she was prone to do on one of our last days. She said, “Now that you’re leaving can you tell me the secret ingredients in these or the recipe right?” Rick made a sick joke about the secret ingredient as he was pounding his fist under his desk and she would laugh along and say, “You really won’t tell me, will you? I love these cookies you can’t make me live without them now.”  He never told her.

Rick and I laughed and told her the same thing we told her all those years, “If we tell you we’d have to kill you.” So she asked for one more cookie before we left and we gave her several and said our goodbyes. She was one of those who wrote and told us that the cookies were now lousy and her company would no longer use them as gifts. (our biggest  corporate customer) That made us so sad. We worked so hard and in less than one year this new owner killed it. But that is just our opinion.  

To them, I am sure they made it better.

Now products like that are everywhere. It is not unique and I wouldn’t want to be doing this anymore than getting a sharp stick in the eye. I liked that we did it when it was new and different. We got out at the right time. It served its purpose in a way because we both lost our jobs and made ourselves new ones.

We headed off to Seattle to reenter the corporate world and neither Rick nor I ate a cookie for 10 years….not even Girl Scout cookies.
Actually, we've never looked back until I was asked to tell you about this saga in our lives.
We only recently baked any kind of cookie.
But we've never made those cookies again.
Of course, we still have those recipes.

By the way, that name I came up with that night of margaritas that Rick thought was dumb?
That was the name of the company and that is what gave us our tagline and a fun twist of words in our commercials. So who's dumb now?

Yesterday Rick went into our attic above our garage in 12-degree weather to hunt down the boxes of stuff we stored away at a time when we just didn't want to see any of the things about this business. We thought someday we would. We both recall the books in there, the professional photos of the product, etc. But can we find them?  NO!  

I know if it had been warmer we would have spent more time digging. 

I have found some old photos but could be of better quality. When you come to the blog you may just see the photos I found 'cause I know I have them somewhere....and now it's a quest.
Here is what I have.

These pix look bad and blurry. This was a display so yes the cookies were old and hard! The basket was filled with warm cookies cut in quarters so while browsing you could munch away.

This was Santa's Gingerbread house that Rick made. Santa and his elves kept their goodies in there for when they had visiting hours at the mall w/Santa for all the children. The window shutters were all candy. All around the door as well. The chimney was gingerbread and our cookies were in the middle. The roof was all our cookies. The 4 sides of the building were actually gingerbread. This thing smelled great! 

This was the 2nd location. This was at the entrance to the mall.
The building you see behind was 'plaza like' of 3 more businesses.

Back to regularly scheduled programming......finally.