Mark Smith
We make cookies & brownies inspired by our favorite childhood desserts, breakfast cereals, candies…and really just anything that’ll hopefully bring a smile to your face even before you take your first bite.
Our slogan is “Cookie Good: It’s how you wanna feel” and we take that idea through ever facet of our business.
It’s not just about the nostalgic/happy feeling we want people to have when they try one of our cookies — it’s also about making sure our customers and employees feel valued/appreciated and it’s about doing good in our community.
Tell us about yourself?
I’ve always loved to bake. When I was a kid my grandfather had a delicatessen in Los Angeles (the original location of Canter’s Deli in Boyle Heights) and I used to love to visit and spend time behind the bakery counter.
After college, I started working in the film business (as and executive then a producer and finally as a writer) — but I always baked and had fun coming up with fun, new, creative takes on cookies and brownies.
When the Hollywood writers’ strike happened in 2007-2008, my wife, fearing I’d be out of work for a long time, suggested we start a cookie business from our home. We sent an email to 100 friends and family and the orders started coming in.
People who received the cookies started ordering and then the people they’d sent them to started ordering and we knew we had to move to a commercial kitchen. At that point the strike ended and I was suddenly spending my days writing and baking. Finally, in 2014, we decided to open up our own shop.
Never having run a business and with very little retail experience under our belts, my wife and I hired a handful of employees and opened our doors. We’ve be baking and growing considerably ever since.
If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?
This’s a tough one. A lot has happened in the last couple of years because of the pandemic.
I’d probably just tell myself to stay calm and know that it’ll all be okay. Things might be different but we’ll come through it all and be just fine.
What problem does your business solve?
I think we give a little happiness to people. It’s hard to bite into one of our cookies and not feel happy, nostalgic, transported to a simple, more joyous place…even if it’s just for a minute.
As an aside, we’ve had people order cookies to send as a condolence when a loved one dies.
At first it seemed a little odd to be sending cookies to people in mourning but we’ve heard from many customers over the years how opening a box of our cookies completely transformed the feeling in the room.
People would gather at the box, reading about all the flavors, breaking off pieces of each and sharing, and smiling.
What is the inspiration behind your business?
I think my six-year-old self is the inspiration for most of what we do at Cookie Good. My parents did not keep sugary foods in our house.
On the rare occasion a box of Cap’n Crunch Cereal was snuck into our kitchen, it was like magic. I’m probably trying to recreate and share that feeling in all of our cookies, brownies, and our Cookie Corn.
What is your magic sauce?
Not sure about a magic sauce but I think we just try to stay true to what excites us and hope it will continue to excite others as well. It’s hard to think about the competition.
Every business is different and comparing ourselves to other cookie shops isn’t necessarily productive — Cookie Good is uniquely “us” and long as people keep responding to what we do, we’ll keep on baking.
We are very detail-oriented here — from the way each and every cookie dough is different (not a one-dough with mix-ins kind of thing), to how we pack each cookie box offering the most visual impact when the box is first opened, to the notes cards and custom cookie labels we create.
The point is, we care about every detail and hope that feeling translates to our customers’ experience here.
What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?
We’d like to have Cookie Good outgrow our current location and build a commissary kitchen where we can make a lot more cookies.
We already ship nationally (through our website as well as on Goldbelly) but a bigger space would help us do a whole lot more of that. We’d also like to grow our Cookie Corn business, selling it in supermarkets across the country.
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?
Emotionally, I think fear is our greatest challenge. It’s easy to let fear keep us from trying something new, taking chances and growing.
We’ve come a long way from baking out of our home kitchen but the next step feels daunting and the fear of it has held us back. Practically speaking, the employee shortage has been one of the biggest challenges we’ve encountered.
We put out ads and very few people respond…and when people do apply, a large percentage don’t even show up for the scheduled interview.
That’s pretty dispiriting. It also means that we have fill in where needed on a daily basis which takes time away from trying to work on our plan to grow the business.
How do people get involved/buy into your vision?
We’re always looking for smart, motivated, passionate, fun people to join our team. Ideally, we’d love to meet someone much smarter than we are to help us chart our next steps.
