We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Michelle (Jessica) Taylor (Christopher) a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Michelle (Jessica), thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you recount a story of an unexpected problem you’ve faced along the way?
By far, the most unexpected issue to arise for Altadena Cookie Co. has been the devastation of the Eaton Fire. We had been working for nearly two years on opening an actual brick & mortar store front and were so lucky that it survived. However, the sheer magnitude of destruction to our town has been intense and so widespread that we are in uncharted territory. My home was completely lost. Jessica’s is still standing but uninhabitable. Equipment, ingredients, packaging, supplies, and financial records stored at our homes were all destroyed and damaged. We were on schedule to open in February but the construction timeline immediately and understandably stalled. We also lost nearly our entire client base overnight. All our friends, supporters, and clients have scattered in the wind due to their own losses and the lingering unknown surrounding the toxicity left by the ash and debris in our community. Because we’ve invested so much in this community, though, and because of the collective trauma we’ve shared, we have made the decision to see our build through to completion. We know that many Altadenans have been forced to leave the area but there are a great many that are still here. Despite all of the challenges that face this community, we are determined to be a welcoming, accessible, and joyful space for those that remain and for the rest when they return. For our own sense of healing, we need to get back to work feeding our community.
Michelle (Jessica), love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Jessica and I met almost 13 years ago in a Meetup.com group for new mothers when our oldest children were just a few months old. We quickly bonded over our shared love of baking. In 2020, we officially formed our partnership and licensed our home kitchens for food production through Los Angeles county. Starting a business during the onset of a global pandemic might seem like a wild idea but it actually helped keep us focused and busy during an otherwise extremely challenging time. Our families “bubbled” early on in the pandemic so we were able to stave off some of the isolation so prevalent during that time as well. We accepted orders online and offered contactless pickup on a designated day each week. Word of mouth spread quickly and we built our client base over the next few years via guerilla marketing. By 2023, we’d hit the limit of what we could produce in our home kitchen and began the process of finding and building a brick & mortar store front.
We’re primarily self-taught and are deeply fascinated by food science, testing and perfecting our own recipes while taking great care to both understand and concretely craft our version of the perfect cookie. Our community knows us for our decorated sugar cookies- we offer seasonal designs and are usually fully booked with custom orders, but our drop cookies, which we sell via pre-order and at local artisan markets, have developed their own cult-like following. Jessica and I have unique art styles, respectively, but we share a cheeky sense-of-humor that is distinct in our field as well as a deep appreciation of the ephemeral nature of our creative medium- cookies.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
I have experienced many pivots in life. I am a widow, a cancer survivor, and my house just burned down! Adversity is part of life and though I’ve experienced a little more than my fair share, I remain a very optimistic and goal-oriented person. Being flexible and adjusting as we go is the only option sometimes.
Most obviously, the Eaton fire is forcing a major professional pivot on us. Our initial plan for the store front was to have a diverse space offering retail bakery supplies, baking classes, a fresh bakery counter, and a space for cookie decorating parties and events. However, after watching the entire town burn down around us, we’ve put most of those plans on hold. Our guiding principle for Altadena Cookie Co has always been “accessible joy”. Altadena is a wildly diverse community and now more than ever, our plans for our space and our prices need to reflect what is needed by and accessible to our community. We’re temporarily pivoting away from retail sales, classes, and parties and are focusing on creating a comforting and fun space where anyone can walk in with a few bucks in their hand and have a moment of fresh-baked joy. We’re also building a lending library of baking resources, equipment, and supplies so that as our displaced community finds their way back into their own kitchens, we can support them in some small way. For us, baking is love, and whether that love happens in their kitchen or ours, we’re here to share in it.
Any thoughts, advice, or strategies you can share for fostering brand loyalty?
Social media has worked well for us in keeping our clients updated and in touch, whether it’s for an event, a promotion, or even just a snarky joke, our socials are where it’s at. We find that being able to interact directly with our clients in real time, allows us to develop and nurture long-term relationships. We think it also helps that those on the other end of the phone or computer know that they’re interacting directly with us and not some random PR or customer relations team. We take great care to develop personal relationships with our clients.
We foster brand loyalty two ways- by remaining steadfast in the quality of the cookies we produce and by being an active part of the community we serve. We show up for the events. We donate when we can. We share when we can. We are truly as excited about our clients’ special event orders as they are and because of this, one order will always lead to another, and that means the world to us. We take great care to protect and nurture that trust within our community.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.altadenacookieco.com
- Instagram: @altadenacookieco
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/altadenacookieco/
Image Credits
Chandra Wicke Photography