A
family bakery has figured out how to get the attention of big businesses:
Find the sweet spot. Brothers Paul and Gary Liu, who run California's
Freedom Bakery with their father, Tony, decorate shortbread cookies with
photo-quality images. The result is Cookie Greetings, a calling card more
likely to be eaten than filed in a Rolodex.
"There
are two constants in Silicon Valley: People love technology and people love
food," says Paul Liu. "I thought we'd do well."
He
was right. After Cookie Greetings' inception two years ago, sales are up to
$600,000 a year for the San Jose location, where the Cookie Greetings are
produced (other shops in Salinas and Watsonville are primarily retail). The
bakery can produce up to 1,000 cookies a day, with 15,000 cookies the
largest order so far. The rapid growth is prompting expansion to a new
manufacturing plant in Watsonville, and the Lius are running out of
available relatives to employ--of 40 workers, one-third are family members.
Aesthetics
have always been important to the Lius. Tony immigrated from Taiwan in 1975
and established the Watsonville bakery, where he specialized in decorating
cakes with fine-art images. Though the brothers grew up in the business,
they decided to pursue other careers after college--Gary as an engineer,
Paul as an auditor for a prestigious CPA firm. But by early 1997, they had
become bored with their jobs. At the same time, they were excited by new
printer technology that could transfer digital images to objects other than
paper with fine sprays of food coloring. Eyeing the opportunity for
incorporating the new technique with baked goods, they came back to the
family business.
Gary
used his engineering savvy to tweak the technology for the best possible
resolution on the light lemon-sugar icing (their uncle's recipe) coating the
shortbread cookie (their dad's recipe), while Paul's business panache made
him the marketing man.
After
salespeople took the cookies to trade shows, word spread across the country,
the only advertising a gold sticker on each cookie. Now, companies such as
Yahoo! and Macy's send cookies along with press releases for promotions, and
the novelty scores high with people celebrating weddings and anniversaries.
At least one couple has used the cookie as a birth announcement featuring
their newborn's cherubic face.
But
is it art or is it food?
Paul
says it's both. "Most people help themselves to two. We find people
eating one and keeping the other."
For
more information: www.freedombakery.com;
408-COOKIES (408-266-5437).
(Alaska
Airlines Magazine, February
2000)