We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Christine Meyer a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Christine, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.
In the fall of 2020 I had surgery to remove a tumor from my leg. As I awaited the results, I was going stir crazy! I needed something to do that would distract me but also not require a lot of sitting. I had always wanted to try cookie decorating and had been watching videos online that were inspiring, so I decided to try it out. The first batch looked pretty awful, but I enjoyed it enough to keep trying. Thankfully my tumor came back benign, but my activity was still limited for the next several months, so I had lots of time to keep playing and honing in on those decorating skills!
I realized pretty early on that there was no one else in my area who was actively making and selling decorated cookies. Living in a small town that borders the suburbs of Columbus Ohio, there was definitely an audience for custom products. As friends started to approach me about selling the cookies, I decided to dive in.
Once I decided to start a business, I took a cautious approach to getting started. I mastered my cookie recipe first, making sure it was an amazing tasting cookie. Then once that was mastered, I worked on decorating and making them look pretty. I knew first and foremost that if the cookie didn’t taste good, it didn’t matter how it looked! I only offered two flavors and took on small orders for the first few months.
A local coffee place approached me about selling cookies at their shop. That made it easy for customers to try just one cookie out and begin to build my customer base. I utilized social media heavily and gave out lots of samples. Before I knew it I was booking large orders, expanding to other restaurants, and my schedule was filling up!
My small hometown, Centerburg, really embraced us and has taken great pride in Cookieburg! They have a lot of pride in small businesses in their community and I wanted to give them a cookie company to be proud of! Without the support of this community, I wouldn’t have been able to do it!
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
At this point, I’ve been in business for nearly 3 years, and my menu and clientele has expanded greatly. Thanks to social media and my supportive customers, I get orders from all over the greater Columbus area.
I make all of my cookies with the same base recipe, which I developed myself. As I create new flavors, I tweak things, but they still have that traditional sugar cookie look and taste – different from a drop cookie style like chocolate chip cookies. People know to expect a thick (3/8 inch) cookie that is slightly crisp on the outside and soft and chewy inside. The most popular flavors include Butter Vanilla, Almond, Chocolate Peppermint, Snickerdoodle, Lemon, and Cookie Butter. I aim always on the lookout to create new flavors, some have been flops, some have been awesome from the first attempt!
As a cottage bakery, I work exclusively out of my home. I always want my customers to get their cookies as fresh as possible. While packaging keeps them good for a couple weeks, I still like to get them in customers hands within 24 hours of starting them. This means I have to be flexible with my time and prepare each week, knowing that I have to work on certain days. Working at home makes it a lot easier to work whenever I want! Most of the time I do the final decorating work between 8:00 pm and midnight.
Most cookie sets take about 90 minutes to do one dozen and there really aren’t shortcuts! I’m at a point where I can usually predict how much time I will need and if a requested set is really complicated, I can charge accordingly. I try to keep my products affordable for what it is, I have different options available that allow for a variety of budgets.
Another aspect to my job is teaching cookie classes! I’ve found that a lot of people are looking for a fun activity to do with friends or family and decorating cookies fulfills that! I do both public classes as well as private classes and again, try to keep them budget friendly for my area!
This job allows for a lot of encouraging moments and smiles! From social media posts to texts from customers, I love hearing back from customers about how they have enjoyed their cookies!
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
Custom cookies require a ton of resilience! I have worked on orders for 36 hours straight in order to finish the job, I’ve pulled all nighters, I’ve scraped off an entire set of cookies and started over. It’s not a job that you can start and quit on! So if it means I have do any of the above, then that’s what I do. Moments like these have gotten better over the years, but sometimes it’s unavoidable!
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
Contact Info:
- Website: www.mycustombakes.com/cookieburg
- Instagram: Cookieburg1
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/cookieburg
Image Credits
Amber Thomas Photography