Celeb Favourite Milk Jar Cookies Launches Franchise Program

What if the 11-year-old Courtney Cowan hadn’t run out of baking soda?

Immediately Cowan is the founding father of Milk Jar Cookies and is launching a franchise program for her model, beloved by celebrities from Wanda Sykes to Seth Rogan and extra and initially made well-known when retailer Williams-Sonoma requested her in 2016 to show her cookies right into a baking combine and promote it at their shops.

“That was actually unbelievable to me. That put us on the nationwide and worldwide stage,” she mentioned, and calls from the Immediately present and Oprah and the remainder adopted, together with a nationwide delivery program.

It began with an early baking lesson. “One fateful day, in 1989, we had been out of baking soda. I mentioned, that does not matter,” and made the batch anyway. “So I realized about leavening brokers. That lit my mind on hearth, the truth that there was science on this scrumptious interest of mine.”

Later she was in L.A. working in tv, “and I might herald cookies. Single woman in my 20s, I had nothing higher to do with my life than bake cookies. I began to experiment with different components and made different totally different concoctions,” she mentioned.

“I cherished the thought the place I may take a traditional dessert that hadn’t been in a cookie,” like a banana break up, which her dad cherished. “That grew to become so enjoyable for me.”

Each time a TV present was canceled, “I’d use the hiatus to say, OK it is cookie time,” she mentioned. By 2006, “I put a fax machine within the coat closet. I’d work till 10 o’clock and I’d have 12 dozen cookies to bake, after which take a nap and drive them wherever they needed to go,” she mentioned.

“Every step of the method I fell an increasing number of in love with it. The creativity, after which the mile-wide smiles that might be on folks’s faces once you present up with fantastically packaged cookies.”

‘We have been round longer’ than rivals

She had again surgical procedure and wrote the marketing strategy. “The remaining is historical past,” she mentioned, together with her Milk Jar Cookies store opening in 2013. Value of funding for a franchise is $325,000 to $750,000. Her L.A. store is the one one, so there aren’t any financials to report in Merchandise 19. Annual income is now $1.3 million at her store. “We had been doing $1.5-, $1.6 million previous to COVID,” she mentioned.

“There was simply a right away momentum. Sure, there had been Mrs. Discipline’s. We had been actually the primary cookie place that wasn’t within the mall. I had very humble desires. I needed to be the neighborhood cookie store, the ‘Cheers’ of cookies, and know all people who is available in. The primary day, it was imagined to be the delicate open, and folks had been slammed. We bought out at 2,” she mentioned.

“I had by no means seen a spot that had 15 flavors of cookies. Cookies are ubiquitous but additionally they have been very ignored for a very long time, as being considered a connoisseur product. It was a missed alternative, or an oversight for a really very long time.”

Others are speeding into the house today, together with Crumbl Cookies and Chip Metropolis and Soiled Dough and Chip Cookies and Cookie Plug. The chief by far, Crumbl, is suing Soiled Dough and vice versa, revealing the cutthroat nature of a seemingly candy enterprise.

“I am very nicely conscious of all the pieces that is happening. I’d say we have been round longer than any of these folks and any of these firms,” Cowan mentioned. “We’ve got confirmed ourselves over 10 years. It has been very methodical.”

Studying perseverance from onerous occasions

Cowan employed Matt Hale, CEO of Fashionable Acupuncture, as a marketing consultant, connecting with him “by way of my finest good friend’s boss’s husband,” she mentioned. She additionally did a program with Goldman Sachs referred to as 10,000 Small Companies, in 2020. “It is primarily an MBA. You come out of it together with your five-year development plan,” which in her case concerned franchising.

Hale checked out her proposed cope with one other consulting firm. “She informed me what they needed by way of fairness and share of charges. I mentioned all proper, that is it, I’ll begin this firm,” that means his personal consulting agency, “and I’ll be selective” of shoppers.

“I simply suppose there’s another choice on the market. And also you have a look at what these consultants say they are going to do, and so they promote a ton of licenses” however do not get them open, he mentioned. “That leaves a foul style in my mouth. I need to assist others that I believe have a very cool mission and be enjoyable to work with.”

His purpose with Cowan: “Make certain all of the issues I do know and all of the errors I’ve made, can cut back her studying curve.” Fashionable Acupuncture was hit onerous by COVID and has simply begun a re-growth mode. Twenty-three clinics are open, down from 52 on the peak. “We had been very lucky to make it by way of COVID, significantly the service we’re in the place anyone did not need to be touched for 2 years,” Hale mentioned.

“And the factor about it, we had a whole lot of franchisees from different ideas. Therapeutic massage Envy franchisees had been getting harm actually dangerous too. It was a really difficult time. We’ll push by way of.”

He realized perseverance from the onerous occasions. “I took time to really feel sorry for myself, however on the finish of the day you must decide your self up. After I see Courtney, and the way she desires to broaden, has been a lightweight for me. Hey, it is like now I am able the place I can actually assist others not make the identical errors,” he mentioned.

Cowan’s purpose can be to protect the tradition of “cookies and kindness,” she mentioned. “I prefer to say fairly issues style higher. I imagine that. There’s a feeling once you open the field that somebody took nice care to place this collectively for me. It does one thing for the thoughts. It makes you are feeling particular.”