The Cookie Cure

by Susan Stachler

  We didn’t have any appointments. No one knew we were coming. Maybe it was crazy, but I let myself be proud of us for at least showing up and trying.

  “Mom,” I said. “What are we going to do?”

  “Look confident and act like we know what we’re doing.”

  So that’s what we did. We marched over to the front desk and Mom said, “Yes, we have deliveries to make to O magazine, Redbook, and Woman’s Day,” figuring the men behind the desk would let us through the secure turnstile. I bet we gave the security personnel a good laugh. They didn’t let us go up to the offices, but they did kindly point us in the direction of the delivery station and mail room around back.

  We delivered letters on two different occasions, and on a third trip to New York, we were invited to stop by and say hello at O magazine and Redbook, both of which had already published blurbs on us. That time, we had appointments, and we were warmly welcomed.

  There have been times when we’ve been working that I’ve thought, This is crazy. All of this. That we even do this. And in the midst of Mom’s and my chatter, laughter, and efforts, I can’t help but think, I love working with Mom. I can’t believe what we went through and are now pulling off. And when there is a bad show, no sales, dissatisfied customers, or just an off day, Mom and I can honesty look at one another and say, “It’s just cookies.” And we both know exactly what that means.

  Dear Sue,

  How many times have I thought, If you could see me now? Certainly one of them would have been me walking down Peachtree Street in Atlanta dragging a tent on wheels behind me at 7:30 a.m. to set up for the Green Market. Sometimes Susan and I had to divide and conquer tasks, and this time, I drew the short straw for the Saturday morning farmers’ market. I found myself going back to the car multiple times for our folding table, banner, samples, and product, only for a summer thunderstorm to arrive thirty minutes in. I could hear your “Oh, just leave it!” as I packed up and ran each load back to the car. In that moment, I wanted to call Susan and say “I quit.”

  This one I couldn’t believe. I answered the phone one afternoon to hear a pleasant woman tell me she was calling from Martha Stewart Living. When she used my name I thought, I’m getting a personal call about a magazine subscription? She called to notify Susan and me that there were ten stories selected from across the country for their Dreamers into Doers Awards and that Susan’s letter was one of them. I must have sounded baffled because she added, “I promise, this is not a come on.” I was baffled! I had no idea what she was talking about, and Susan was on a week-long vacation in California.

  When I reached Susan, I barely started to tell her about the call when she began laughing and repeating over and over, “Are you kidding me?”

  I had to wait until Susan regained her composure to find out what she had done. “What did you write?” I asked.

  “I don’t remember. I didn’t save it. I wrote about you. They were looking for women who’ve turned their dream into something. What did the lady say?”

  Sue, back in the seventies, Martha Stewart was coming on the scene as a professional caterer and hostess extraordinaire. Since then, she has become a media mogul known for her expertise in cooking, decorating, and entertaining. So now you can understand Susan’s reaction.

  Susan and I were treated to a two-day affair with plane tickets, rides in stretch limos chauffeuring us around Manhattan, a shopping spree, and a chic hotel with great views of the city. Everything Martha Stewart and her team did for us was top-notch. And we were honored at their awards gala in beautiful Lincoln Center. Our pictures—yours too—were shown on a giant screen while Susansnaps was being highlighted.

  As for Martha, we were sipping champagne at the cocktail party when we got a chance to be personally introduced. In meeting her, I said, “Thank you for this lovely recognition. I’d like you to meet my daughter Susan.”

  Guess what she said! “Well, of course, you can’t have a Susansnap without a Susan,” Martha said in her precise diction. “It’s a pleasure to meet you both.”

  Martha was exactly what I hoped she’d be like. She was stunning—head to toe perfection. You would have loved her attention to detail. Everything from the flower arrangements to the hors d’oeuvres to the private dinner we attended later in the evening was flawless. Susan and I had enjoyed every minute.

  PS Sue, remember the Tapestry album we sung our hearts out too? I met her. I met Carole King at this event. She was being honored with “The Living Legend” award. And she didn’t disappoint. She played “You’ve got a Friend” on a gorgeous grand piano, and I about lost it. When she sang, “Close your eyes and think of me and soon I will be there…” I was so moved that I had to pinch myself to keep the tears in.

  17

  Open for Business

  We had taken Susansnaps as far as we could in our garage kitchen. It was time to move out. Mom and I realized if we wanted to grow, we needed retail space. There’s something official about having a commercial address and a brick-and-mortar store. Although our current shop was accessible, it was also on our home property. That meant if someone wanted to pick up an order on a Saturday morning, they might pass my dad mowing the lawn or encounter one of my siblings backing down the driveway. We were closed for pickups on Sundays and Mondays, but that didn’t stop people from knocking on the front door of our house. We also had to park our cars strategically to make sure that customers could turn around. In addition to those inconveniences, the higher cost of residential shipping was eating away at our bottom line. And when the weight of a freight truck crushed a portion of our driveway one day, that was it—we decided that we had to move.

  Having a store would also mean we could stop renting cargo vans, stuffing them with gingersnaps, and driving all over the South to attend shows. Instead, we could let shoppers come to us, and as far as I was concerned, that day couldn’t come soon enough. I was ready for our days of being on the road to be over!

  The next thing I knew, we were peering into the window of a hole-in-the-wall retail space. I asked Mom, “Are we really doing this?” but it was too late; I could tell that heavenly music was going off in her head. Mom loved it. Me, not so much. It was a run-down space in an old building on a side street in Atlanta. But it was all we could afford. Looking through the dirty window, I could see filthy brown carpeting, stained ceiling panels, and walls covered with pegboard. It wasn’t set up for baking or selling food. Honestly, I wouldn’t have wanted to eat anything that came from that space.

  Mom said, “It might need a little work.” That was an understatement. But we both agreed to it, snatching it up without even stepping through the door or having a contractor look at it—and without knowing that it didn’t even have a toilet or a sink.

  Mom loved this dismal spot, and although I had my doubts, I was going to have to trust her conviction on this one. It was a done deal; this was going to be our new headquarters. Mom and I had gotten through personal challenges. This was a professional challenge. And I knew we had it in us to push ourselves. It was uncanny how much our experience with cancer had prepared us for creating, running, and growing our small business. Here, as we had in so many other ways, we took a leap of faith.

  All the tradesmen in town, from a young, hotshot builder to a crew of veteran contractors, sized us up as a sweet mother-daughter team and gave us bids so outrageously priced I thought they’d added an extra zero by mistake. Little did these contractors know, Mom had renovated houses, so she recognized that their numbers were patronizing and unfair. And Mom didn’t like that. She said, “If you want something badly enough, make it happen.”

  I couldn’t agree more. That special, “only-I-can-do-that-for-you,” durable floor-sealing job we were quoted $3,700 for turned out to be nothing more complicated than a trip to Home Depot, $257 for paint and sealant, and a little elbow grease before Mom and I had done it ourselves. There was something satisfying in start
ing from scratch and taking charge. We subcontracted the renovation, hired Randy and Luke for backup, and did whatever was left ourselves, including arranging all the necessary permits, inspections, and codes. Soon enough, we had turned the drab, dingy little storefront into the cutest polka-dot cookie emporium, and we couldn’t have been more excited.

  Our loyal customers were just as thrilled as we were, and we were all counting down the days until the store opened. But with progress came setbacks too. A big storm came through and flooded our store. Rain poured down from the roof and blew sideways through the cracks around the bricks. It was a swampy mess.

  Shortly after we got that cleaned up, we visited Coca-Cola’s corporate offices, selling cookies at their in-house employee holiday shopping extravaganza. While we were there, our new storefront sign was being put up. We had approved the design and were ready for it to start announcing to the city, “We’re here!” But when we returned to the store and drove past the shop to check out the sign, I cringed at the sight of it.

  “This is embarrassing,” I said.

  Mom agreed. “Well, isn’t that something? It makes it look like we didn’t have enough money to get a grown-up sign.”

  We pulled into our parking lot and got out to take a closer look. It was too small. The font was minuscule. The sign was barely noticeable, the words were hardly legible, and the worst part was that this had been one of the few things we’d allowed ourselves to have done for us, and it wasn’t done right.

  I wanted to believe the sign was okay. “The white background looks bright and clean, Mom,” I said. But it didn’t look great, grand, or special at all.

  No matter how much time we put in, there always seemed to be one more thing that still needed to get done, and everything took longer than we thought it would. We only had one oven, so we had to strategically plan what day to shut it down, take it out of the garage, and move it. That involved hiring movers, a handyman to drill a hole in the wall to connect the exhaust pipe, and an electrician to hook it up, as well as timing everything so that we could resume baking within twenty-four hours. It was November, just heading into the busy holiday season, and we were taking orders, baking, filling orders, and shipping every day; we could not afford to pause. We set an opening day for the new store but pushed it back once, twice, until we just had to say, “We’re unlocking the door tomorrow.” If we didn’t open, we’d miss the holiday rush.

  • • •

  It was two o’clock in the morning, and we were opening in eight hours. Mom and I went to the twenty-four-hour FedEx Office to laminate our price signs. I doubted that such a small detail would make or break our first day, but by then, we were delirious and felt like we had to get it done. As I ran the signs through the laminating machine, one of them got jammed. The paper started going in crooked, and the machine began making clicking sounds.

  Mom hurried over. “What did you do to this thing?”

  “I didn’t do anything!” I answered, slightly frantic. “It’s the machine. It just started eating it or something.”

  Mom began wrestling with the machine. “Hold on. I’ll get it out.” She pulled on the paper with all her might, then started laughing.

  “Mom, this isn’t funny!” I was giggling now too. “How much does one of these things cost? We’re going to have to buy it.”

  I doubled over and Mom started crying, she was laughing so hard. We were dog-tired and so excited that we were halfway between laughing and sobbing. Then we noticed that the machine was smoking.

  There were no people around, no cars on the streets. Everything was quiet and still, and it was just the two of us in the middle of the night. How many late nights had we been up together, dealing with the side effects of treatment? It was an odd moment. We’d been working so hard on the new store that we were drained. It was physically tiring, but there was also an emotional side to this we hadn’t anticipated. We hadn’t had a chance to take it all in. We’d been on the go for months, and the stillness that night—in a print shop, of all places—made us stop and reflect on how far we had come. In a few hours, we would be walking into uncharted territory, and it was overwhelming, and exhilarating too.

  Pulling up to the store that morning was amazing. I saw my name on a beautiful, bright sign (which we had reordered after the first disaster): “Susansnaps: They’re Love at First Bite.” Inside, as I flipped on the light switch, I was impressed by everything we had accomplished. Mom and I had painted crisp black-and-white stripes on the walls, gray-on-gray polka-dots on the floor, and a vibrant, cheery red on the molding. We’d moved my grandparents’ baking table with the butcher-block top into the center of the store to serve as our counter for our cash register. For the front, we’d collected vintage furniture, china cabinets, and dining tables from flea markets and painted them in shiny white lacquer, to give the shop the feel of an old-fashioned bakery. We’d built a scalloped frame around the front window and matching scalloped shelves, which were neatly lined with bags, boxes, and sparkling glass jars of gingersnaps. As a finishing touch, I’d surprised Mom with a little framed picture of Aunt Sue. I loved our shop, and I believed our customers were going to love it too.

  For our opening, we were introducing two new flavors: pnuttysnaps and alohasnaps. Peanut butter cookies are perennially popular, so that prompted us to make peanut butter gingersnaps, and Mom and I like coconut, so we decided to try toasted coconut gingersnaps too. Plus, now I could say my corny line: “A tropical vacation for your taste buds!”

  We’d also designed more packaging options, so that there would be something for everybody who came into our store. We had Baby Betty collections in blue and pink, a wedding display, a Holiday Holly theme with Christmas decorations, and more—as many different products as we could dream up.

  It was almost ten o’clock. Mom had turned on music, and Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” was playing as the oven hummed in the background. The aroma of spices began filling the shop. Our sample tray loaded with five flavors of gourmet gingersnaps was in place.

  As I turned our sign to Open, I said, “Mom, are you ready? This is it!”

  “Let’s make it a good day!” Mom said. She never said, Have a good day. It was always up to us whether we would make it a good one or not.

  Five minutes later, a woman walked into the shop. “I’ve been waiting for you to open!” she said. “Wow, your shop is adorable. Okay, let’s see—I need fifteen gift boxes in the holiday packaging.”

  Not bad for our first customer in our new space! The more we heard things like, “You can’t,” and “That might be hard to do,” the more Mom and I told ourselves, “We can.” We were open for business.

  Dear Sue,

  Our phone calls from years ago were still paying off. You and I would have so much fun hashing out paint colors, wallpaper, and furniture for our first homes. That was just another thing we had in common. It’s kind of funny, because Susan and I have that in common too.

  Through the years, Ken and I have renovated multiple houses. When Susan and I decided to open a new retail shop, I was thrilled that some of what I’d learned would come in handy for the build-out. It was great that Susan was our in-house authority on how to market our cookie business, but I felt good being able to navigate some of the renovation challenges with the confidence of knowing how our efforts would pay off.

  And Sue, Susan gave me a wonderful surprise. She put up a framed picture of you in our new shop. It was the first thing I saw when I walked in the morning we opened the store. Susan couldn’t have been more thoughtful. It was the photo from your high school graduation. I was fourteen at the time, and you’d given me a copy that I carried around in my wallet just in case I wanted to show off my pretty and “neat” older sister. It has a well-worn crease through the middle from being folded and unfolded countless times.

  18

  Caller ID

  I’ve had a few phone calls that have
changed my life. That’s the funny thing about the phone: each time it rings, I never know what I’m going to hear on the other end. Will it be my sister, calling in a panic from a changing room because she’s stuck in a dress with a broken zipper? Or my dentist’s receptionist, hunting me down for the dreaded dental cleaning that I could swear I just did two weeks ago? Or maybe it will be our family doctor, calling after hours: “Susan, are your parents home? Can you put one of them on the phone?” There is always that split second between hearing the phone ring and answering it, when I think, What’s this going to be?

  Mom and I were having an ordinary day at the store. I was sitting at the desk printing shipping labels while she was packing orders. When the phone rang, I checked the caller ID, like I always did. I would screen our calls, announce whoever was calling, and then pass the phone off to Mom. This time, I called out, “It’s New York, New York.” I grabbed the phone and held it out to her, but she shook her head. “Mom, take the phone,” I urged.

  “No,” she said. “I’m not going to take it. It’s that woman. You know it’s her. She’s calling back again.”

  Earlier, Mom had taken a call from a woman in Manhattan who insisted that we had misplaced her order. While Mom used her best diplomacy to convince the disgruntled woman that we would make it right, she frantically wrote the order number on a piece of scratch paper and mouthed, “Look—this—up.” I tracked the order, and it was in the woman’s building. Mom carefully explained to her that the concierge must have had her package all along.

  The phone was still ringing, so I finally gave in and said to Mom, “Okay! I got it.” Then, as she went out front, I answered, “Thank you for calling Susansnaps.”