The Cookie Cure

by Susan Stachler

  Mom reminded me, “It’s not your job to make other people feel better about your cancer.” I knew she was right, but that was hard to remember sometimes. I wished that, rather than go on and on about how fine I was going to be, someone had just given me a tin of gingersnaps!

  • • •

  We had a new customer, Barbara, who was hooked on Mom’s coconut cake and gingersnaps, and she became a frequent visitor to the shop. One afternoon, I saw her pull into the driveway so I headed to the back to get her cake and cookie tins while she chatted with Mom. I leaned into the fridge to pull out the cake, which was resting on its cardboard cake round, but since I have stubby fingers and no nails to speak of, I could not get it off the refrigerator shelf. With no leverage, I chased the three-layer cake as it slid around and around. While I was fumbling with it, trying not to stick my fingers in the frosting, I heard Barbara say, “Laura, have you ever considered taking these cookies to the Mart? The gourmet show? You would do great.” My ears perked up. I knew she was talking about the well-known Atlanta International Gift and Home Furnishings Market, which was held a few times a year.

  With the cake finally boxed and the tins bagged up, I gave them to Barbara, smiled, and quickly excused myself. Leaving Mom to complete the transaction, I dashed off to the computer to look up the show. We knew about AmericasMart Atlanta, but it had never crossed my mind that Mom and I could sell there. When I clicked on the exhibitor application and saw that it was multiple pages, I figured that there was no point getting my hopes up, or even reading the whole thing, if we couldn’t afford to attend. I skipped straight to the information on exhibitor costs.

  I learned that it would cost thousands of dollars to enter the show, and for that huge amount of money, we’d only get a ten-square-foot space, two undraped tables, two folding chairs, one wastepaper basket, and preshow vacuuming service. It didn’t seem like a great value to me, but I knew that hundreds of successful food vendors and shops attended the show every year. I thought, Surely, I must be missing something. Why would anyone do this if it didn’t work? Scrolling back to the top of the application, I read the large text that jumped off the screen: “Experience a marketplace unlike any other—one connecting buyers and exhibitors from around the globe… Buyers from all fifty states and more than ninety nations.” I knew we had to go to this show if we were serious about our business; to me, it wasn’t even a choice.

  When I heard the office door open, I spun around in the desk chair. “Mom, come read this. Want to go?” Without much convincing, she agreed to take a look.

  The Mart held the gourmet food show four times a year, and the next one happened to be coming up the next week. “It doesn’t cost anything just to look,” Mom said. “Let’s go see what it’s about, and then we can consider signing up for the one in September.”

  It hadn’t occurred to me to go on a field trip to research the Mart first, but it was a smart idea. “Sure,” I said. “Let’s scout out the competition, see what we’re up against.”

  Days later, Mom and I entered the gourmet food floor and instantly found ourselves on sensory overload. The mishmash of odors, from hot sauces and dip mixes to exotic coffees and seafood stews, smelled downright gross. The fluorescent lights were on full blast, illuminating a different eye-catching, colorful display every ten feet, making it hard, at first, to focus. The hum of people shouting over one another was deafening. “Try a sample.” “We make the best.” “You don’t want to pass this up!” Each seller screamed louder than the last, hoping to nab potential customers. The huge room was filled with the urgency of buying, selling, and making deals. While it seemed overwhelming to me, I also felt excited. But looking back, maybe I was just excited to be out of the house and doing something new.

  As we made our way up and down each aisle, I alternated between feeling energized and intimidated. Since we didn’t intend to place any orders, we stayed back and observed from afar, not taking samples or asking questions that could mislead the vendors. I dissected the elements of each booth—decorations, displays, even the clothes the vendors were wearing—and took mental notes; I was enjoying it so much I was almost giddy. Every few feet I would tap Mom’s arm to get her attention. “We can so do this. Did you see that booth two back, on the right? It wasn’t anything special.” We walked a little farther, and I commented, “Simple color schemes make the products pop.” Then, “We’ll need an easy way to give out samples.” Mom was just as excited as I was, taking everything in and pointing at the things that stood out to her.

  It felt good to get lost in my ideas and the creative vision Mom and I were beginning to share. Thinking about the potential future of our business was suddenly captivating. And it didn’t hurt to see Mom’s wheels spinning either. The prospect of exhibiting at this show was a little intimidating, but I needed to do this. We needed to do this. As we stood back and watched sellers sell, I realized how much I was longing to latch on to something new, and I soaked up the energy from everything going on around us.

  I saw that most of the companies attending the show had fully developed product lines with a variety of flavors. Because the products featured here were sold in bulk and shipped all over the country, they had to have a shelf life. Most of our products, including cakes and pies, had to be eaten within a few days after they were baked and couldn’t be shipped. Susansnaps were the only product we had that would work for the show. We didn’t find any companies selling just one item, and I wondered if we could really bring Susansnaps—our unassuming gingersnaps in a simple red tin—to this type of high-level buying market. I probably should have felt more unsure, but I liked the feeling of being challenged. It would definitely be out of the ordinary to bring just one food item to the Mart and build a business on one product, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t try it. So, I figured, Why not?

  As I looked around and took in the booths’ elaborate displays, beautiful branding, and creative product packaging, I told myself, You can do this. It’s just cookies. Break this down into small tasks. Keeping that thought in my mind made the idea we could someday have a booth here seem doable. A ten-by-ten-foot space, a sign, a backdrop, table covers, order forms, and samples of a delicious product. That’s all it was.

  We continued strolling along and came across an impressive booth of hot chocolate mixes. We stepped inside to browse, and I soon felt the vendor’s gaze on us. I tensed up. Had we been outed for just looking around and not placing any orders?

  The vendor, an outgoing guy, walked over to us. “Hi! How are you?” He looked at me and blurted out, “I really like your scarf. You look great.”

  Caught off guard, I thought, My what? Oh, my head. I ran my fingers around the knot at the back of my silk scarf and simply said, “Thanks.” I had been so lost in the world of gourmet food and imagining a Susansnaps booth that I had managed to forget for a few minutes about the way I looked. Now though, I realized I might look a little funny—and there I’d been thinking that Mom and I were being inconspicuous. I was so used to my scarf that when I’d gotten ready that morning, I’d thought the only weird thing about my outfit was the pair of sensible shoes Mom had asked me to wear.

  I eventually found out it could take years before I’d bounce back completely, and my lack of energy was a daily reminder of this. I had willingly agreed to Mom’s shoe request that morning because it was better than the alternative—using a wheelchair. She had tricked me into doing that before, when Carey and I went shopping for her homecoming dress, and I wasn’t eager to repeat the experience. It was after I’d had a tough round of chemo. I overheard Mom on the phone asking, “Will anyone be using the church’s wheelchair tomorrow?”

  Coming into the kitchen, I asked, “Mom, what are you doing?”

  “Nothing,” she said quickly.

  “I just heard you,” I said. “What’s the wheelchair for?”

  “Carey said you two are going to the mall to shop for her homecoming dress.
”

  “Yeah. I want to. I think we’re going tomorrow.” When Mom didn’t say anything else, I started to catch on. “Is that what you want a wheelchair for? I don’t need that.”

  “I know you don’t.”

  “Then why are you getting one?”

  Mom looked sheepish. “I was just going to drive you girls there and follow along.”

  “You’re going to look silly pushing around an empty wheelchair.”

  “I’m good with that,” she replied. “I’m bringing the wheelchair. Sit, don’t sit. I’ll have it with me, just in case.”

  Mom knew the mall could be daunting, and she didn’t want Carey or me to be scared if I happened to have an incident, like running out of energy or suddenly becoming dizzy. She’d had an experience like that before, when she’d gone shopping with Aunt Sue, who had an episode that left her out of breath. So the next day, Mom followed behind us with a vacant wheelchair. I can’t say Carey and I didn’t laugh at her. But by the time we left, I was collapsed in that chair, needing to go home.

  Now, I wasn’t sure if it was my sneakers or my scarf that had done it, but I was glad we’d caught the attention of that hot chocolate vendor. We got to chatting, and he was actually a really nice guy, telling us the ins and outs of the show and even inviting us to see how he ran his warehouse. He gestured to his impeccably decorated booth and company display, saying, “This might look involved, but there’s nothing to it. Besides, it looks like you’ve done much harder things.” It turned out that his mom had some experience with what I had just been through.

  Mom and I continued past a few more booths, collecting brochures and catalogs from different vendors as we went. Suddenly, I felt my energy crash, and my feet started dragging. I was done, but we’d been having such a good time I didn’t want to say anything. Mom must have sensed it though, because she said, “I think I’ve seen plenty. How about you?” Back in the car, we spent the whole ride home discussing our ideas, beginning to make a plan of attack.

  After our trip to the Mart, Mom and I had more questions than answers, but our creative juices were flowing and ideas were pouring out. We had an extensive to-do list that kept growing. A question as simple as, “How do we ship a case?” would turn into, “How many units fit in a case? Where do we buy packing materials? How much will we charge?”

  Hoping to turn our cookie hobby into a real business, Mom and I tried anything and everything we could dream up. We glued together packaging ideas, called local gift stores, snapped product photos for our brochure, and even played tackle football with shipping boxes filled with our cookies, to see how they’d withstand the bumps and falls they’d experience during the shipping process. Our first trial run of sending cookies across the country ended with Mom’s friend in California receiving a tin of crumbs. Each week, we’d hack away at one task, project, or question, while still coming up with more ideas.

  We didn’t sit down and map out a business plan or set goals for what we wanted to accomplish in the next one, two, or five years, but we did sign up and pay for a booth at the September show at the Mart, giving us nine months to get up and going. Then we just started working and plugging away at it. Maybe it wasn’t the smartest way to start a business, but it’s what we did. It was thrilling and therapeutic to create something from scratch, to start at the bottom and work our way up. And the fact that my mom and I were doing it together made it even better.

  We had big ideas for what a cookie company like Susansnaps could become, but we kept our day-to-day operations very simple. We had to, since we didn’t have much money to play around with. But even though we tried to keep things simple, we still had difficult challenges to face. We weren’t following any textbook, and our only goal at that point was to have a successful show at the Mart. We researched where to buy spices in bulk, how to do custom packaging, and how to build a website. We decided to hire a reputable company in Atlanta to help us build a website. They gave us a new logo, new color scheme, new font, new titles. It was modern and edgy and…nothing at all like Susansnaps. They didn’t take us seriously and hadn’t listened to what we were envisioning. We ended up paying $6,000 and having no website to show for it. It was money we couldn’t afford to lose, and the experience taught us to trust our gut and not let anyone push us around when it came to our creative vision.

  For our packaging, we decided to add a label explaining the story behind Susansnaps, describing how Mom had come up with the idea of baking the cookies and naming them after Aunt Sue and me. I was happy to design the label, writing it from Mom’s point of view rather than mine, to help her share what she wanted everyone to understand about Susansnaps: these cookies were made from more than just sugar and spice.

  • • •

  One thing had me thinking. It was great that Mom had a recipe for gourmet gingersnaps and that we were selling to a small, but loyal, customer base, but our customer list, which consisted of people around town, a few of my cancer buddies, and my grandparents, didn’t exactly amount to a standout track record. I didn’t want us to be trying to convince a buyer at the Mart to take a chance on our product with a line like, “My grandparents enjoy these cookies, so they’ll do great in your gift store in Virginia!” Somehow that didn’t sound very convincing.

  So I made a suggestion to Mom. “You know how everyone keeps telling us that they love our cookies with coffee and tea? Maybe we should try to sell to a coffee shop, to get the snaps out to a wider customer base. We could try Starbucks. There’s one in the mall.”

  “Susan, how would we sell there?” Mom said. “Starbucks? They have thousands of stores.”

  “OK,” I said, undeterred. “What about Nordstrom? They have that coffee place near the entrance.”

  “Sweetie, Nordstrom?” Mom was laughing nervously because she knew I was serious.

  “I don’t see why not,” I said.

  Again, I was off to the internet to do research. Clicking through the website of our local Nordstrom store, I announced, “It’s called an espresso bar. Here’s the number.”

  “Don’t you think we should write to Nordstrom’s corporate office?” Mom asked. “Maybe we should see what they think and offer to send samples first.”

  “No,” I responded immediately. “You’re good on the phone. Just call the store.” It was easy for me to say it was a good idea, but I sure didn’t want to make that call.

  “Susan, I’ve never done anything like this before.”

  “Neither have I, but you’re good at talking. I got the number, now you call.”

  “Oh, thanks,” Mom chuckled. “But that doesn’t mean that I know how to sell.”

  “Mom, you’re not really ‘selling.’ You’re just going to see if we can get an appointment, so we can show them our packaging and leave a few samples.” I quickly added, “What’s the worst that can happen? It’s just cookies.”

  Reluctantly, Mom agreed, and as she dialed, I said, “If it’s not going well on the phone, hang up. We’ll find something else.”

  The next thing I knew, Mom had landed us a meeting with Nordstrom’s buyer for the Southeast region, to be held in less than forty-eight hours. Unfortunately, we weren’t quite prepared to meet so soon—we didn’t have packaging or pricing yet—so we had to scramble. While I tried repeatedly to get our home printer to produce some decent printouts of our labels, Mom was baking hundreds of gingersnaps. “Susan,” she said, “we need fifteen perfect cookies.”

  We bought small, food-safe plastic packets from The Container Store, placed our homemade labels on the front and back of each one with double-sided tape, filled them with three cookies each, wrapped a ribbon around the middle and secured it with glue, and finished by sealing the opening with our foot-press heat-sealing machine. Admiring our quick product mock-up, which actually looked pretty good, Mom asked, “What do you think we should wear?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered, not
having given it any thought. “It’s a sales meeting, so I guess we should dress up?”

  I considered wearing my interview suit, but I had purchased that at a different time for a different purpose, and I couldn’t quite face getting it out for this meeting. We could have worn aprons and jeans, as befits a couple of bakers, but we ended up going with all-black business attire. They say you can never be overdressed. Well, we were.

  I didn’t know about Mom, but I was so nervous walking to the third-floor offices at our local Nordstrom. The woman Mom had spoken to, Sharon, greeted us courteously and invited us to take a seat in her office. For a second, I couldn’t believe I was sitting across the desk from a buyer for the elegant Nordstrom department store. I had no idea what I was doing or how this would go, but at least we were having a meeting. Mom dove in and started describing how our unique product would be a great fit and a delicious choice for their customers, just as we had practiced back home. I didn’t see what the buyer’s initial reaction was, because I wasn’t looking at her. I was watching Mom, feeling somewhere between awestruck and dumbfounded. She sounded like she had been selling our cookies to big-name customers for years. When I heard her mention our packaging options, I realized it was my turn to jump in. I pulled our prototypes out of my bag and placed them on the desk, announcing, “Three cookies per unit, and twenty-four units to a case.”

  Mom kept talking, explaining the story of Susansnaps while I stared at the samples I had just laid out. Oh no, I thought. These looked better at home.

  The woman was pleasant and nodded as Mom spoke, but she seemed preoccupied with finding something in her desk drawer. Then, somewhat abruptly, she said, “I like your packaging and what you do, and I think this could be a good fit for us.” We had been in her office for less than seven minutes.