Cline Wines, Washington Post, and holiday cheer...oh my!

Apologies are in order...we have been attempting to update this blog with a list of bloopers CookieZen style but keep getting distracted by REAL WORK (ha ha...tongue in cheek attempt to poke fun at professional bloggers...because we're jealous that you can make a living off of blogging!). Granted all this real work has provided plenty of inspiration for our list of "what not to do when trying to run a cookie company", and we'll share a few of those further down, but in the meantime...drum roll please...

Check out the Food Section in the December 8th issue of the Washington Post!!! We couldn't be prouder of ourselves for how far we've come since a little concept of pairing cookies and wine was born in the summer of 2009. For whatever reason, there is something just so thrilling about seeing our labor of love photographed and published in print media. This in no way discredits, knocks, or diminishes the importance of the multitude of on-line support and encouragement heaped upon us this fall. We value and appreciate every little mention our fledgling company receives and give everyone credit on our website because we know all too well what it feels like to be a voice among many (or a cookie among many...hee hee).


For those of you not in the DC Metro area, you can read our mention here: Food in The Washington Post

On a festive note, we received a very nice Christmas present from Cline Cellars located in the Carneros region of Sonoma county. Three fabulous bottles arrived for our tasting pleasure: Cashmere, Mourvedre, and Viognier. Earlier this fall we had the chance to sample these wines at a cookie and wine tasting event we conducted at Calvert Wine and Spirits outside of Baltimore and loved the unique flavor of these somewhat less familiar wine varietals. Seriously...we already are up to our necks in cookies...we needed something "fruity" to wash the calories down!

In the meantime, here are some things to digest... consider the fact that it sometimes takes us four tries to get a batch of Ginger Molasses cookies correct (a recipe we've made hundreds of times), or the one little incident of spilled essential oil of lemon that caused our Sparkling Boxes to be back ordered for a week (although isn't it a sign that you've made it when you can claim "back order" status?? Yikes...or maybe it's just wishful thinking...), or perhaps the oven fiasco in which both thermostats had to be replaced, or that one little trip to Restaurant Depot (our wholesale ingredient procurement store) in which we somehow ended up in Maryland instead of Virginia and had to call in reinforcements to pick up our children from preschool, or the fact that one of our baking assistants broke her foot and is in surgery today, or maybe it's the sheer ridiculousness of trying to parent full-time, co-op for four children at a preschool, work-out at 5:45 in the morning (because something has to be done to keep these waistlines from spilling over), run a household AND a booming business simultaneously that causes us to wonder why someone (probably a non-multitasking man) scheduled only 24 hours in a day. BTW--I'd google this answer but don't have the time!

Ho ho ho...it's been a fabulous December. Seriously. We couldn't be more blessed.

Box O' Cookies, Bottle O' Wine

The serious holiday gifting is beginning. We are slated for several appearances this month for Cookies & Corks at various wine shops and a few holiday parties. Today was a great tasting at The Wine Cabinet in Reston, VA. We love that store...owners, employees, customers, etc. We've always had a great time with wine reps there too.

See, when we show up for a tasting we generally have no idea what type of wine will be there. We come armed with some of our most versatile cookies and cross our fingers that the wine rep will be receptive to the idea of our cookies with their wine.

Our goal is to enhance the experience of wine consumption. In order to enjoy the cookies to their fullest, you need some tasty wine. It's a win-win. We pitch our cookies, they pitch their wine and the happy customer walks away with a bottle o' wine and box o' cookies. A great gift, a great evening, a great luncheon, a great book-club...you get the picture!

At the tasting, people were picking their favorite cookie and asking which wine (of those the rep had) would be best with the cookie/pairing box. Or, people were picking up wine from the rep and asking which box of cookies were best with that particular bottle of wine. Either way we were all happy...cookie ladies, wine rep, wine store and most assuredly the customer.

Time Warp

Has it truly been since July that we've posted anything to this blog? We have been in overdrive these days. Baking, selling, more baking, trade shows, and still more baking. We are up to 11 retailers now...so exciting! We have our Cookies & Corks at some great stores in the Northern VA area and are baking in a commercial kitchen with 2 baking assistants --- and Leah & Laura, of course!

We were also introduced into The Whole Foods Market Mid-Atlantic region...albeit just one store. We are, for now, only in the P Street store in DC. This just so happens to be the busiest store in the whole region. Great staff there. Our other retailers like Red, White & Bleu in Falls Church and The Wine Cabinet in Reston continue to re-order. We are very happy to see that.

All in all, we're very pleased with the response from the general public regarding pairing wine and cookies. It's a stretch for some, but met with great enthusiasm by most. We hope to get talking to event planners soon so they can share this idea with their clients who are planning weddings, corporate events, etc. It really is a cook party idea...not just because we said so! It goes over very well.

One of my favorite recommendations is to get a group of people together with a box of our Sparkling Wine pairing cookies, a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, bottle of Prosecco and bottle of Merlot. Taste just the Iced Lemon cookie with all three of those wines...fabulous with each wine, yet different tasting each time. It's a cool party trick!

We'll be posting some pics soon...we've got tons to share.
Cheers!

Tick, tock...

Where has the time gone? Is it really July already? We have been so engrossed with our company, that we've missed all of June! Great strides have been made. We've finalized all of our recipes, begun baking in a commercial kitchen and finally have the ink-presses getting all warmed-up for our beautiful new packaging. It's going to look outstanding! We'll post some pictures for sure.

We're also getting ready to launch Cookies and Corks. We'll begin locally, in the Northern VA, DC, Baltimore area first, then secure an on-line retailer and finally look to other parts of the country. We've got help from a great PR gal. We are also very excited about the Fancy Food Show coming up in January where we'll have an official launch into the Specialty Food industry. We'll have a nice kick-off party out there for sure...wine country...Cookies and Corks...oh, you betcha!

We're also looking to getting some momentum with Cookies and Corks events. We love that people are really enjoying the concept of pairing our cookies with their wine. We've been doing weddings, small parties, large events, etc with the cookies. People tell us how many people are coming, and we help guide them with the right number of cookies to order and what type of wine they could buy. It's great.

Off to bed now...zzzzz's are in short supply these days. Both of us are also training for a 1/2 marathon...our second summer in a row doing this. Wish us luck. Not sure if next summer will be available to us for these early morning work-outs and long runs on Saturday's. We'll see...depends on how many cookies you folks decide to buy!

Nite...Laura

First, the good news... www.cookiezen.com 3.0 is up! It serves us well having one spouse in the equation who is a whiz at web development. Especially when said party is willing to take direction from multiple people (and not always delivered in the nicest way--hee hee it's a perk of being the wife--no need to sugar coat everything!). New photos, new layout, new copy...it's a transformation from the previous site that catered solely to our direct sales customers. Version 3.0 provides information for interested retailers and will also provide people in markets that don't carry our product ways to spread the word. Get it out there!! We're super excited for everyone to try our products be it our classic line-up of all-natural gourmet cookies or our awesome cookie and wine pairing boxes.

And speaking of cookie and wine pairing boxes, www.cookiesandcorks.com is also well underway and should go live by the end of the week. We've worked tirelessly to get our pairings just right and are currently training for our second half marathon to work off the experiments. There will be cookie and wine pairing matrices for people to consult, a forum for consumers to share their pairing experiments, and weekly wine pairing suggestions. The wine industry is constantly evolving and we're going to do our very best to try to keep up!

Hey...at least our hearts will be healthy from all the red wine we'll have to sample...

On the business front (i.e. the not so thrilling part of starting a business), we've had to deal with a lot of first time learning experiences. Hiccups, gliches, successes... the old adage of two steps forward one step back definitely applies to us. It once again makes us wonder how in the heck people do this! And do it successfully! And manage to avoid being one of the 95% of new specialty foods brands that don't quite make it. SCARY!!!

But we're doing well for the most part... Our new business cards are at the printers, the final reformulations from our food scientist should be arriving this week so we can move forward with the packaging for both the bulk cookies and the pairing boxes (which is just so incredibly awesome...thanks DINE!!), and funding is trickling in slowly but surely which enables us to sleep a little better at night. Oh the nightmares I've had about falling victim to this money pit called "starting your own business when mortgaging your house or selling your first born aren't options". Yikes.

Finally, our big PR launch will hopefully be in either late June or early July. Bring on the orders!!!

...or wait...at least until we secure our commercial kitchen rental (cross your fingers) and line up our ingredient distributors, a process completely dependant on having a commercial address. Ugh...these circular frustrations where you can't move forward without first achieving steps that are dependant on other steps is kind of ulcer inducing.

So yes...lots of wheels in motion...tons of exciting changes on the horizon...lots of work to be done...and one huge mama jama credit card bill. We're excited about it all.

New, new, new...

Time is flying. We've got a new logo, new packaging design, new pairings, new more shelf-stable cookies, new business plan and new butterflies in our stomachs. We're gearing up for an official launch at the Fancy Food Show in NYC this June and couldn't be more excited...and/or nervous!

It's great to see the business take shape in front of our own eyes. We can't wait to put the Cookies & Corks pairing boxes out there to see how they are received. Leah and I both believe that life is a self-fulfilling prophecy...so we should be good to go! This is such a fun business to delve into. What could be bad about cookies and wine...I mean, really!

Even if there are only one or two of you out there now reading this (Hi Mom!) we hope that one day our blog will have a lot of traffic. Scratch that...we know that we'll get a lot of traffic! :)

Savory Cookies are here!

Well...what once used to take Leah years has now only taken weeks. She has formulated three delicious savory cookies for CookieZen's Cookies & Corks line. Yahoo!! They are: Apricot Sage, Gouda Bacon and Parmesan Thyme. Amy Reiley, our official pairing guru, is hard at work coming up with the perfect wines to compliment these delightful morsels. What a tough assignment! Next comes the packaging...thanks to DINE, we are almost there. Get ready America...Cookies & Corks is coming. Start tasting, start enjoying and start spreading the word!

Savory...meet CookieZen.

The time has come...we think...to add some savory to our line-up. Leah is experimenting and I am taste-testing. What a tough job! Next comes pairing them with wine...again...life is rough!

We'll keep you posted. It's head-spinning fun here at Cookies & Corks...CookieZen!

Cookie, meet my friend Internet...

Life these days doesn't often allow for long moments of reflection, but I had a big "wow" moment yesterday while unpacking a package from Amazon containing a new all natural, no-stir peanut butter and some organic, 100% natural non-partially hydrogenated shortening.

How did anyone manage to start a business before the Internet???

Okay, I know that sounds ridiculous and somewhat spoiled, but seriously, here is a quick list of things I've been able to accomplish with the help of my good friends Internet Explorer (I know...I haven't made the jump to Google Chrome yet) and Google.

1. Email. 'Nuf said.
2. All the pesky but oh-so-crucial documents you have to file with the State of Virginia and the Federal Government in order to form a recognized, official business.
3. Monthly sales tax filing. Everything is linked! I enter in gross sales, the program figures it out and automatically debits my operating account. No letters, no checks, no stamps, no need to pass calculus.
4. Research!! Hours of my life have been spent conducting food science research for no charge whatsoever. Like finding out the reasons behind using Dutch Processed Cocoa as opposed to the regular stuff or understanding why some of my cookies refused to puff up in the oven. Thank god because microfiche used to make me want to throw up back in the day. (All that visual moving while sitting still! Bad combo!)
5. Shopping!! With two young kids and a slew of other responsibilities, who has time to physically scour local grocery stores for all-natural, organic alternatives to mainstream ingredients? Plus, for those times I did actually have to visit a store, Google gave me the address and my navigation system led me there. Back in the day I suppose I'd consult the yellow pages and dial the phone. Hmm...I don't think I even have the yellow pages.
6. Networking. Facebook, Twitter, this blog, random searches for topics with answers found on listserves... CookieZen is "connected" to all these individuals and entities who would otherwise be so difficult to find. And since these options are all free it makes spreading the excitement much more appealing.
7. Business planning. Sometimes I wonder if I should have made a trip to the library to check out "Business Plan Writing for Dummies" or "How to Start a Cookie Company Without Monopolizing Your Kitchen", but then I remember libraries require time and using a reference book's index can be confusing if you don't know exactly what you are looking for. Plus photocopying stuff??? Remember trying to press down on the spine of a really thick book so you wouldn't get that annoying black bar in the center of your page that inevitably covered up the important stuff? Weeding through all the crap on the Internet can be time consuming, but I've discovered some of the best resources by randomly clicking my way through links.
8. Bragging. Let's face it. People, including the ladies of CookieZen, want to succeed. And we want other people to recognize or appreciate all the hard work it's taken to get from point A to point B. Minus the pitfalls and errors, of course! These negative little bits, while certainly not pleasant, make what we've managed to do seem more realistic. How else can we learn from our mistakes if we don't allow for helpful critiques and suggestions?

So yeah...I kind of consider CookieZen a card holder of "Business Planning: Doing it the 21st Century Way". It's amazing what Laura and I are able to accomplish whilst juggling a million other things.

Still, at the end of the day, I like to return to the kitchen where it's just my mixer and me and I can imagine the smiling faces of all the soon-to-be customers enjoying the cookies.

Thank you, Mr. Internet, for getting me here.

CookieZen featured as a favorite from Fancy Food Show!

Wow...we were honored to see that we were a show favorite! It's nice to hear from someone with a refined palate that our cookies are outstanding and that paring them with wine is a hot new trend started right here by us!!

Please read the write-up! http://eatsomethingsexy.com/blogs/amyreiley/2010/01/19/food-gets-fancy-my-report-from-the-2010-winter-fancy-food-show

2010 Winter Fancy Foods Show. It's a wrap!

Taking it all in...

A slightly better shot of our space

Cheers to a wonderful experience!

Apologies for the lack of photos from the show. NASFT has very strict photography rules which is all right because we seriously had very little time to roam. In fact, our lunches primarily consisted of potstickers and teriyaki chicken samples from the Day-Lee Foods booth strategically placed directly behind ours. Yum! I, being the "don't-want-to-look-like-a-mooch" aka "chicken-liver-rule-following" type of person, would grab a few samples and then insist on alternating the rest of the trips with Laura. Although what exactly I was afraid of I'm not sure considering there were probably at least 20,000 attendees of which there were certainly no shortage of tall Caucasians and short Asians! Besides, towards the end of the show we were all bartering our leftovers. "Hey! If you give me some onion and coriander fava bean hummus I'll give you some cookies!" or "Yo...can you hook this girl up with some 5-alarm pepper sauce if I give you some shortbread?" My personal favorite? Some random guy I had never seen before asking if I would trade a bottle of wine for a jar of bruschetta topping. Which I did, mind you! Because I'm trusting like that. Just watch. He probably wasn't even an exhibitor and came into possession of the bruschetta topping through unsavory means...

Which reminds me, by the way, of Tuesday morning's crowning moment when we discovered someone had pilfered our display 2 oz Snickerdoodle cookie!! Laura and I were ecstatic! You know you made it in some form when a complete stranger deems your product steal-worthy! Woot woot! We were just thankful they stole a fresh display cookie.

Honestly though, we had a wonderful, career-altering experience at the show. The educational resources provided by NASFT have already helped guide our next steps (homework! homework! homework!), and the networking among specialty food industry members is bar none. Best of all, we've made new friends. And in an industry with goat milk caramels, black pearl rice, cream-filled fresh mozzarella, Goji berry cookies, wasabi foam, apple sauce in squeeze containers, Valrhona chocolate, and a million different types of salsa how can you possibly resist these offers of friendship?

Top 5 from the 2010 Winter Fancy Food Show

1. Discovering that not all plastic food storage bags are the same! Why wasn't "Barrier Bags 101" taught at the Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago?!
2. Putting real faces to industry giants like Harry and David, Williams Sonoma, Food & Wine, and Starbucks.
3. Secretly enjoying the expressions on people's faces when they realize after asking that a) I am NOT the girl in our poster and b) she's not even Asian.
4. Delighting in the joy of speaking to professional chefs and culinary instructors and suddenly realizing that I actually AM a professional baker!
5. Experiencing the show with my business partner of less than 8 months and being amazed at how far we've come since our first business plan draft.

A Crash Course in Baking 101

Before we got to this moment of triumph there was this...

This will be easy! The bigger the mixer, the faster the dough...right?!

An hour later...

Work those muscles! Full sheet pans loaded with cookies are heavy!

Analyzing the dough to chip ratio...

I need Cara around every time I bake!


Prepping the cookies for transport...


Ming, Leah, Ileana, and Gina pause in the middle of a dough rolling demo...


Ming and Ileana

Hmm...do you think fries and wine pairing is the next big thing?

*~*~*~*~*~*~*

First of all, cheers to the BEST assistant bakers ever. Not only did Northern California locals Gina, Cara, Ming and Ileana volunteer for the job (stingy pay in the form of half portions of cookie samples each!), they added an air of levity that was sorely missed the next night when it was just Laura, me and the Hobart mixer from hell.

The assistant bakers delivered 80s music, plenty of bottles of wine, and In-N-Out Burgers. Laura and I, on the other hand, served up 3.5 hours of cookie dough ball rolling in the form of: Just a half ounce each! Do you call that round? Why is this ball missing chocolate chips? Who forgot to watch the timer?

Hmm...and I wonder why no one showed up the next night.

Seriously though, everyone did a great job. We don't look like we're having too much fun, right? After all, there's nothing "zen" about all work and no play. Still, next year we're contracting out the baking. Or paying our help so they return. :)

NASFT 2010

Wow! We had a great time at the Fancy Food Show in San Francisco. It was the first appearance for CookieZen. We are so excited to get our products out there to people...everyone loved the cookies! Better still, the concept of pairing our cookies with fine wines (not your garden-variety dessert wines) was very well-received. There are plenty of trend-setters out there looking to become a part of the Cookies & Corks movement!

A big shout out to the NASFT organization for allowing us to exhibit as Member Candidates in their New Brands on the Shelf Pavilion with 29 other fantastic new businesses. It will be great fun to watch the other companies gain success too.

We're busier than ever now getting things just right so we can get our delicious CookieZen cookies out there for your taste-buds to enjoy...with wine. We'll tell you how...keep your eyes posted.