Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Ross Canter. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Ross, thanks for joining us today. Coming up with the idea is so exciting, but then comes the hard part – executing. Too often the media ignores the execution part and goes from idea to success, skipping over the nitty, gritty details of executing in the early days. We think that’s a disservice both to the entrepreneurs who built something amazing as well as the public who isn’t getting a realistic picture of what it takes to succeed. So, we’d really appreciate if you could open up about your execution story – how did you go from idea to execution?

Starting a business is a lot like going swimming. There are some people who just dive right in — doesn’t matter if the water is deep or shallow, warm or cold; lots don’t even think/care about splashing bystanders around the pool. There’s also a large portion of people who inch their way into to the water, bit by bit, slowly acclimating to the temperature change before going all-in. And, then there are those who look at the pool, carefully considering a safe entry point; they might even stick in a toe before ultimately deciding they’d rather just sit on a lounge chair and read a book. As much as I wish I were a dive-right-in kind of guy, I am definitely more of an acclimator with a healthy dose of I’ll-just-read-a-book so, starting Cookie Good was not a quick or easy endeavor.

I always loved baking and had fun being creative with my cookies and brownies and would occasionally daydream about having my own bakery (especially when work was frustrating…which in the movie business was pretty often). Thinking about what flavors we’d bake or where our cookie shop might be was easy but anytime we tried to go a little further and think about “how” a cookie shop might be, the daydreaming stopped (and we went back to the comfort of a lounge chair/book). Years went by and I’d occasionally muster up a toe-dip: I twice booked consulting sessions with industry professionals who both told me it was impossible (and stupid) to start a successful food business without an air-tight business plan. I researched business plans and decided I preferred the lounge chair.

Finally, in 2008, as a writers strike threatened to keep me out of work for months, it seemed like the perfect time to take a little leap (albeit into the extremely shallow end of the pool). I couldn’t work, I couldn’t get another job so turning to cookies almost seemed like a rational choice. My wife and I came up with a company name, a menu, basic pricing, and were able to get whatever business licenses and insurances we could. We sent an email to 100 friends and family saying that we were going to start baking out of our home kitchen and then sat back to see what would happen. To be clear: we didn’t do this because we had any confidence we’d succeed but really because doing something – anything – at a time when life seemed beyond our control felt good (even starting a cookie business with no freaking business plan). As it turned out, we got our first order within 3 minutes. That order brought another and another. Someone else wanted to ship 20 cookie boxes across the country – we hadn’t even thought about shipping – we quickly figured it out and were suddenly in the cookie-shipping business.

Our journey from home kitchen to opening a brick-and-mortar bakery took a few years of learning and acclimating and lots of baby steps – and, while I really admire other businesses who seem to have the ability to quickly cannonball their way into the marketplace, we did it at our own pace and are most definitely swimming in the deep end now (if only we had time to sit on a lounge chair and read a book!)

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My grandfather was one of the original Canter brothers at Canter’s Deli’s first location in Boyle Heights. As a little kid, I’d visit my grandpa on Sundays and always marveled at the bakery case filled with flaky, cinnamony, chocolatey, nutty treats. I think my love/fascination with food started there. Growing up, I was lucky enough to have a Hostess factory near my house and I’d wake up to the scent Wonder Bread baking. We’d go to the factory on field trips and again, I was mesmerized by the process of how these Ding Dongs and Twinkies and Apple Pies were made. Years later, as a college film student, I had an internship in the movie business. Working for free and being 20 years old is not a good combination so I took a brownie recipe that I had been working on since high school and set out to make some spending money. I’d bake late at night, again early in the morning, go work my internship for most of the day, and then head out to a Century City skyscraper, offering up my basket of brownies just as the assistants and executives were in need of a late afternoon sugar-fix. The thing is, in those days there were really only two kinds of brownies: chocolate or chocolate with walnuts. To make it more interesting/fun/creative, I tasked myself to come up with five different flavors each day and each day I sold out. I went to work in the movie business right out of college but the thrill of my summer brownie business stayed with me, growing, percolating until Cookie Good was born.

We do make brownies at the bakery (and we still have five different flavors in stock at a given time) but our focus is now on the cookies. While we have fourteen cookie flavors every day, our complete menu has almost 300 different varieties. And, I will say that even now as a (mostly) grown man, I approach each new flavor with the same wonder and excitement I had as a kid looking at the Canter’s or Hostess bakery cases. Our cookies are based on our favorite desserts and breakfast cereals and ice creams and I guess it should come as no surprise that cookie versions of Rugelach, Rainbow Sprinkle, Black & White, Ding Dong and Hostess Apple Pie show up on our menu each and every year.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

Managing a staff is one of the biggest challenges of having our own business. Peoples’ work ethic, speed, and communication skills vary tremendously. So, when you find someone great, you don’t want to lose them. While we do have a lot of fun here, having a happy team is about more than playing great music while we scoop dough or planning a Cookie Good-goes-to-Disneyland day – it’s about making sure that each and every person feels appreciated for who they are and what they bring to the team. We had someone come to us as a bakery assistant who was incredibly organized, hard-working, and very communicative so asked if he’d be interested in becoming an assistant manager – today he’s our manager. A dishwasher who worked at the shop one day a week (he had full-time job somewhere else) was so amazing that we gave him as many hours as he could take. One day he mentioned that he wanted to learn how to bake so we taught him. Today he’s our head baker (and he’s here full-time). Point is: we play to peoples’ strengths, what they’re good at and what makes them happy and in turn, we all work better together and that helps our business grow.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

Despite being called Cookie Good, we don’t say really “it’s good enough” here. If it’s not “great” or “awesome” or any other superlative — if I don’t want to take a nibble out of every cookie that I pass by — we keep at it! We’re the same when it comes to packing our cookies. We don’t just put cookies in a box, they are actually arranged for maximum visual effect (by color & texture) so the recipient is excited before they even take a bite. Gift notes are hand-made and hand cut (and if the margins are even slightly off, if the bevel-cut of our ribbon is not sharp, we’ll redo it). This is not to say that we are obsessive (okay, maybe a little?) but we do know that people have a lot of choices where cookies are concerned – more and more bakeshops are popping up each day – and we hope that the care we take, the sense of pride we put into everything we do will show through.

Contact Info:

• Website: cookiegood.com
• Instagram: cookiegoodla
• Facebook: cookiegoodla
• Linkedin: cookiegoodla
• Twitter: cookiegoodla
• Yelp: Cookie Good