Photo credit: Goodie Girl Cookies
On assignment developing a feature story for Food Dive called A Balancing Act: How to go from idea to successful food startup, I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Shira Berk, founder and CEO of Tribeca, NY-based Goodie Girl Cookies – great-tasting cookies that just happen to be certified gluten free.
What a sharp, smart and successful lady.
Berk started Goodie Girl Cookies in 2010. The brand continues to gain steam, landing placement at a growing roster of national retailers, including Kroger, Target and Walmart. Most recently, Goodie Girl Cookies signed a deal with Starbucks, making 2-ounce sleeves of the company’s best-selling Mint Slims available along with Frappuccinos.
The following is an excerpt from my Food Dive feature story, which can be read in full here.
Goodie Girl Cookies: Building a brand one cookie at a time
Like many food startups, Goodie Girl Cookies began with an idea in a home kitchen – make a great-tasting cookie that happens to be gluten free by using all natural ingredients and wheat flour alternatives.
“I had a vision. But for me, the important thing was figuring out what I wasn’t able to do or learn quickly enough,” founder and CEO Berk told Food Dive.
Despite the company’s meteoric rise in recent years, Berk told Food Dive that it was all about taking small steps. As she states on the company website, “Just like in baking, building a business is about finding that perfect blend of ingredients, taking the right steps, in the right order, to create something amazing.”
After outgrowing the home kitchen, Berk moved into a commercial kitchen and entrepreneurial incubator. Here, she networked and learned.
“It’s about becoming a member of a community where ideas are shared and people help you launch your company,” Berk said. “It’s more than a place to bake cookies. I gained access to resources and became connected with other entrepreneurs in the field who had actually done this before.”
With Berk’s background in PR and marketing, she’s passionate about the creative side of building the business and brand, but needed to look outside for help on the production end.
“For me, the challenge came with production,” Berk said. “I did every single thing possibly wrong.”
Through the incubator, Berk was introduced to a bakery consultant who helped smooth out many of the production issues. “That was the catalyst,” Berk said.
The next move was to a bigger commercial kitchen with proper baking equipment she needed to scale. It was here that someone introduced her to a Whole Foods buyer, who became interested in her product, and Goodie Girl Cookies broke into Whole Foods Northeast region.
Berk said her “game-changing” moment came in 2015 when she won a booth at the Fancy Food Show, an annual event held in New York City. There she met her current manufacturing partner, family-owned Toufayan Bakeries, which provided access to the commercial bakery infrastructure needed to scale production and distribution. Single-year sales went from around $20,000 to $1 million, Berk said.
Berk now spends her time running day-to-day operations, handling creative functions and developing retailer relationships, while her bakery partner handles all manufacturing, sales and distribution. Unlike many startups who head down the traditional VC route, Berk is finding success in a family-run operation.
The path wasn’t always smooth-sailing, though. Berk recounts a few of the company’s missteps. She told Food Dive that she said “yes” too early to some major retail accounts.
“Goodie Girl didn’t have the brand equity needed yet in some markets to be successful, for example, when we sold into Costco in the Bay Area,” she said. “The buyer loved our cookies. Production wasn’t an issue. The issue is that consumers didn’t know who we were.
“In retrospect, I would have focused harder in my own backyard. We’re now available in a lot of states, but there are huge pockets across the country where we’re not. Entrepreneurs must realize that sometimes their backyard is big enough. You can build a footprint and following by starting locally,” said Berk.
Read the complete Food Dive feature story here: A Balancing Act: How to go from idea to successful food startup
To learn more about Goodie Girl Cookies, visit the company website at www.goodiegirlcookies.com
