We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Michelle Gowan a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Michelle, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea

Necessity is the mother of invention. I was a classroom teacher for thirty years. When I retired, they kept right on having school. As I reflected on how I wanted to spend time that had been consumed with teaching for so long, I decided I wanted to bring friends into my kitchen and teach them to bake and decorate sugar cookies. I opened my kitchen to my friends and their friends and ultimately strangers who were seeking to learn some of the trade secrets of the bakery arts. Every Saturday, they would come to my kitchen and I would spend the day teaching them to mix, roll, cut, bake and decorate their cookies. I gave each student my recipe and introduced them to my favorite baking emulsion. As I turned people on to the flavoring, it became harder for me to source for my own use. In exasperation, I proclaimed, “I just need to make my own flavoring so I can have all I need, anytime I need it, and my students can, too!” That particular day, Marc Lipson and his wife Meredith, happened to be in my class and he sort of called me on my outburst asking, “Where are you in the process?” I explained that I had hired a food chemist but I had not gotten any further. Marc was also a high school teacher of higher level math, so he offered to help me develop the signature flavoring I wanted. The food chemist created a carrier (which is a glycerin emulsion base) and sent us all the flavors that we said we liked. With all of the scientific methodology of an elementary science fair, we combined flavors dram by dram and began baking with the experimental formula. We would take samples to school and ask people to eat two cookies for us and tell us which one they liked best. When we consistently had more people preferring our buttery, vanilla, salted-caramel formula over my previously favorite flavor, we took the steps to bring our flavoring to market. We named the flavor Cookie Nip because it has the same effect on people that catnip has on cats! Once we had our product and label approvals, we began bottling and dispensing it by hand from five gallon beverage containers. It took about eight months from idea to approval. We were surprised that because our food chemist was so competent, our formula got FDA approval very quickly, compared to the many, many revisions of the label. Once the label was approved, we offered free samples online to bakers who sent in their mailing addresses. Once again, we learned that you can’t just place a bottle of liquid in a box and mail it to a certain address. In a few days, we had 2,000 requests for free samples that we FINALLY got packaged, addressed, and mailed to their destinations

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Cookie Nip is a bakery emulsion that is a buttery sweet blend of vanilla bean and salted caramel. It can be used teaspoon for teaspoon in place of vanilla extract. Formulated as a signature flavoring for The Cookie School, cookies and cakes baked with Cookie Nip are set apart from others by the unique blend of flavors in just the right combination. Bakers who use Cookie Nip report that their customers know they have something different from the moment they inhale the fragrant sweet aroma opening the box. Cookie Nip is not just “the new vanilla.” It can be added to coffee, cocktails, sweet and savory recipes.

Developed in a kitchen in Bonaire, Georgia by Michelle Gowan and Marc Lipson, Cookie Nip has expanded to be a favorite of cake bakers, treat makers and hobbyist bakers alike. Introduced to bakers at Trade Shows, most bakers are so devoted to the flavor combination that they continue to reorder in larger sizes to save money.

We understand that any variation from a standard vanilla is a hard-sell to many established bakers. However, we have introduced it to so many bakers by offering them a taste with cookie or petit four made with Cookie Nip. Once they taste it, they recognize the possibilities for every treat on their menu. We are proud that many competition bakers consider our flavoring as their “secret weapon” for setting their products apart from their competitors. After all, if they win using our flavoring, didn’t we, in fact, win too?

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

We were developing a blend of flavors that would be used in all baking applications. We anticipated a tedious process gaining FDA approval. In fact, the chemist we hired took care of the FDA approval and it sailed right on through. What we did not anticipate was the tedious process of label revisions. We liked our first attempt at a beautiful label that described our product. Many, many revisions later, we had accomplished adding all the sku numbers, bar codes, oz., ml., ingredients, suggested uses, Georgia Grown logo, in addition to everything we thought the label needed. As retired teachers, we felt like our students used to feel when we would give a paper back again and again until they got it right. After finally getting the label approval, we wanted to introduce our new product to more than just our students. We decided to offer bakers in online forums a free sample if they signed up for one. We figured we could mail out a couple hundred two ounce bottles for people to try in the hopes of making them customers. As a baker, I have been a flavor snob and would not likely sign up to get a little bottle of a new flavor so I hoped we could convince a couple hundred bakers to take the bait. I posted the offer online and went to bed. The next morning when I checked, I had two thousand addresses to mail out samples to! After enjoying a slight moment of panic, I ordered enough padded envelopes and printed mailing labels and poured and labeled enough bottles to mail out. I checked out the cost for mass mailing and took 2,000 bottles to the Post Office. The postmaster began weighing each envelope. I told her they all contained the same two ounce bottle of cookie flavoring.

“Is this a liquid?” she asked.

“Yes, it is.” I said.

“Well that is an entirely different situation. Mass mailings are for political campaign post cards and sales circulars and the like. And they all weigh exactly the same thing. And they don’t involve a liquid. Liquids are handled with special care and we need to send one of these to an inspector in New York who specializes in hazardous materials!”

I looked at her like a deer in the headlights. How was I going to get these little bottles of golden elixir to the people I had promised them to without taking out a second mortgage?! The cost of postage was greater than the cost of the product we were trying to give away.

We had to take all 2,000 packages back home, open every single one, and using an eye dropper, add or subtract a drop or two from each bottle until they were exactly the same weight. While we waited for our hazmat approval, we were opening and re-sealing already addressed mailers. As we were opening all the packages, we wondered if it was ultimately going to be worth it. We tried to talk ourselves out of sending out the samples but that violated the kind of service we wanted people to associate with our brand. We questioned why we ever thought a couple of retired teachers could make a product for human consumption in the first place. And we certainly didn’t anticipate the apparent threat to national security by simply mailing cookie flavoring. After 2,000 samples were sent out across all fifty states, we began to receive orders from the people who tried it. We now introduce it at sugar shows and now ship to all fifty states and seven foreign countries. (And we have a good relationship with the Post Office!)

Does your business have multiple or supplementary revenue streams (like a ATM machine at a barbershop, etc)?

The Cookie Nip Studio Kitchen was born out of a necessity for a manufacturing space for our bakery emulsion. We decided at that time to move our classes out of our homes into a classroom kitchen that was specifically designed to emulate our own residential kitchens rather than a commercial kitchen space. People are more comfortable learning how to produce baked goods in a kitchen that feels like their grandma’s kitchen. We installed residential appliances, countertops and cabinets. We brew coffee and offer our students some of our custom baked goods samples to try. We share some of the methods that we have learned and perfected over decades and support our students after classes with trouble-shooting or even bringing them back for more instruction as needed or desired. Most of our students have such an enjoyable experience in the kitchen and are so surprised by the quality of the cookies they create during class, they immediately inquire about coming back for some of our other classes. Some of them bring their daughters, sisters or grandchildren to our kitchen for our special events. We continually seek to introduce moms, bakers, crafters and entrepreneurs to the bakery arts. We offer community classes as well as private events in our kitchen.

Contact Info:

• Website: cookienip.com
• Instagram: Cookie Nip Studio Kitchen
• Facebook: The Cookie Nip Studio Kitchen
• Youtube: Cookie Nip Studio Kitchen

Image Credits
all pictures are mine. (Michelle Gowan)