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One Smart Cookie: How a Housewife's Chocolate Chip Recipe Turned into a Multimillion-Dollar Business : The Story of Mrs. Fields Cookies
Book by Fields, Debbi
- GenresNonfiction
176 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 1987
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November 11, 2020When Debbi Fields was growing up, she had the feeling that all of her siblings were more special, more skilled, than she was, and it left her wanting to accomplish something that was truly her own. She had an underlying need to be a people pleaser, and she spent hours perfecting her own chocolate chip cookie recipe. As a young married woman, she would hand them out at social events to her husband, Randy's business associates, and eventually the crazy idea was born that maybe other people would pay good money to enjoy her cookies.
It wasn't easy, and convincing the bankers to loan them the money for Debbi's dream was tough, but she opened her first store in a shopping mall in Palo Alto in 1977 and her business eventually grew beyond her wildest dreams.
At one of Randy's meetings, she relates a story about a group of business executives who had asked ahead of time if Debbi was going to bake cookies for their meeting.
"Who better to ask? So I said to them, 'What would you think about my starting a business to sell these cookies to the public?'
'Bad idea,' they said, their mouths full of cookies, what had been a plateful only minutes earlier now reduced to crumbs they were artfully dabbing up with genteel thumbs. 'Never work,' they said. 'Forget it.'"
There are plenty of important points about customer service and business ethics one can learn from reading her book.
She worked at a Mervyn's as a teen, and was very well-liked and productive there. She says,
"At Mervyn's, I just kept pushing and striving, and they kept noticing. The more they acknowledged my efforts, the harder I tried to make things perfect. Some employees - I know from personal and sad experience - do not see the world in this way. I am making x amount per hour, they figure, and therefore I will give them x percent of my effort. Why do people who think that way even bother to go to work in the first place?"
I always found that Debbi's philosophy of always working to make things better, of giving your entire effort, and not just the effort you feel your wage buys, to be very effective.
Like so many of us, Debbie was already experiencing, back in the 70s, the depersonalization of the shopping experience in the big box stores, and reminiscing fondly about spending time and money in an establishment where people really wanted to help you, and would likely know your name, and your family's history - not like the creepy big brother thing we've got going on now.
"...Randy's clients and my friends and both our families and lots of bankers were right in their belief that you didn't sell cookies in order to get rich. I didn't care about the money. It was an experience I wanted to create, some kind of gift to people - a lot of whom I felt were exactly like me, cheated of the emotional value of their money by big stores, fast food, systems without affection."
While still in her first location, Debby hired her first employee when she found someone at another business who "had a knack for engaging strangers in brief but delightful conversations".
"We had a terrific thing together, working side by side in the store. And as others joined us, they were brought into what amounted to a conspiracy to have a good time, to turn a job into play and make it at least a small joy to come to work every morning."
What a great corporate culture!
Debby relates to us a great governing principle, put simply, "The more we did for our customers, the more they did for us. I had always been taught that life was the other way around - that you had to make sure you got what was coming to you - but in practice the opposite was true."
In contrast to the way many franchises do business, Mrs. Fields doesn't just give employees the rote task of putting together a pre-portioned, bulk produced, assembly line style cookie.
"What we do is teach people all over the world, on four continents, how to be excellent, artful, instinctive bakers."
Her company's motto, "Good enough never is", encourages people to go above and beyond, to produce an excellent product, and never to settle for just good enough.
This book is chock full of not just chocolate chips, but tasty morsels of savvy business advice for anyone who really truly wants to chase their dreams of excellence.
It wasn't easy, and convincing the bankers to loan them the money for Debbi's dream was tough, but she opened her first store in a shopping mall in Palo Alto in 1977 and her business eventually grew beyond her wildest dreams.
At one of Randy's meetings, she relates a story about a group of business executives who had asked ahead of time if Debbi was going to bake cookies for their meeting.
"Who better to ask? So I said to them, 'What would you think about my starting a business to sell these cookies to the public?'
'Bad idea,' they said, their mouths full of cookies, what had been a plateful only minutes earlier now reduced to crumbs they were artfully dabbing up with genteel thumbs. 'Never work,' they said. 'Forget it.'"
There are plenty of important points about customer service and business ethics one can learn from reading her book.
She worked at a Mervyn's as a teen, and was very well-liked and productive there. She says,
"At Mervyn's, I just kept pushing and striving, and they kept noticing. The more they acknowledged my efforts, the harder I tried to make things perfect. Some employees - I know from personal and sad experience - do not see the world in this way. I am making x amount per hour, they figure, and therefore I will give them x percent of my effort. Why do people who think that way even bother to go to work in the first place?"
I always found that Debbi's philosophy of always working to make things better, of giving your entire effort, and not just the effort you feel your wage buys, to be very effective.
Like so many of us, Debbie was already experiencing, back in the 70s, the depersonalization of the shopping experience in the big box stores, and reminiscing fondly about spending time and money in an establishment where people really wanted to help you, and would likely know your name, and your family's history - not like the creepy big brother thing we've got going on now.
"...Randy's clients and my friends and both our families and lots of bankers were right in their belief that you didn't sell cookies in order to get rich. I didn't care about the money. It was an experience I wanted to create, some kind of gift to people - a lot of whom I felt were exactly like me, cheated of the emotional value of their money by big stores, fast food, systems without affection."
While still in her first location, Debby hired her first employee when she found someone at another business who "had a knack for engaging strangers in brief but delightful conversations".
"We had a terrific thing together, working side by side in the store. And as others joined us, they were brought into what amounted to a conspiracy to have a good time, to turn a job into play and make it at least a small joy to come to work every morning."
What a great corporate culture!
Debby relates to us a great governing principle, put simply, "The more we did for our customers, the more they did for us. I had always been taught that life was the other way around - that you had to make sure you got what was coming to you - but in practice the opposite was true."
In contrast to the way many franchises do business, Mrs. Fields doesn't just give employees the rote task of putting together a pre-portioned, bulk produced, assembly line style cookie.
"What we do is teach people all over the world, on four continents, how to be excellent, artful, instinctive bakers."
Her company's motto, "Good enough never is", encourages people to go above and beyond, to produce an excellent product, and never to settle for just good enough.
This book is chock full of not just chocolate chips, but tasty morsels of savvy business advice for anyone who really truly wants to chase their dreams of excellence.
March 31, 2023
I came across this book after reading an article about the Mrs. Fields cookie shop recently and was super intrigued. If you're of a certain age, you probably hung out at the mall quite a bit as a kid/teen/young adult, etc. and/or worked there or knew someone who did, etc. Mrs. Fields was common in my area with a shop in any number of malls, a staple like your anchor stores, etc. So I was curious to read up about Mrs. Fiends and that she was (IS) an actual person.
This is, as you can guess, a memoir by Debbi Fields. Her life and times, how she grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, drifted a bit early in life but also found talents and had the drive to start a cookie store. Unsurprisingly Fields discusses some of the barriers and hardships (plus the sexism and misogyny that also helped drive her to create the Mrs. Fields brand in the first place) of creating a business, how banks were, to put it politely, skeptical of the venture, etc.
Overall, it was pretty interesting. Her personal backstory perhaps isn't the most exotic or unusual and the writing is not the best (could have used a ghostwriter), but her personality really shone through the writing and it was interesting to see how she persevered into creating the Mrs. Fields store. It was also interesting to see how her and her business idea perhaps fit the time and place. I am unsure if someone like her would be able to succeed in the same way today, although it would depend on her ability to adapt to social media and the like.
As this was written in the late 1980's it's definitely outdated and some of the stories, concepts, anecdotes, etc. might feel a bit quaint. All the same, it was still a fun read and I'm glad I managed to track down a used copy (not at the library and not available as an e-book). If you like the brand/cookies or enjoy reading these type of brand histories/memoirs it could be an interesting read but I would not necessarily buy or go out of your way to read it unless it's something that really interests you.
Historians of cookies, cookie shops, the concept of the shopping mall, women entrepreneurs, etc. might find this a good resource, though.
This is, as you can guess, a memoir by Debbi Fields. Her life and times, how she grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, drifted a bit early in life but also found talents and had the drive to start a cookie store. Unsurprisingly Fields discusses some of the barriers and hardships (plus the sexism and misogyny that also helped drive her to create the Mrs. Fields brand in the first place) of creating a business, how banks were, to put it politely, skeptical of the venture, etc.
Overall, it was pretty interesting. Her personal backstory perhaps isn't the most exotic or unusual and the writing is not the best (could have used a ghostwriter), but her personality really shone through the writing and it was interesting to see how she persevered into creating the Mrs. Fields store. It was also interesting to see how her and her business idea perhaps fit the time and place. I am unsure if someone like her would be able to succeed in the same way today, although it would depend on her ability to adapt to social media and the like.
As this was written in the late 1980's it's definitely outdated and some of the stories, concepts, anecdotes, etc. might feel a bit quaint. All the same, it was still a fun read and I'm glad I managed to track down a used copy (not at the library and not available as an e-book). If you like the brand/cookies or enjoy reading these type of brand histories/memoirs it could be an interesting read but I would not necessarily buy or go out of your way to read it unless it's something that really interests you.
Historians of cookies, cookie shops, the concept of the shopping mall, women entrepreneurs, etc. might find this a good resource, though.
February 14, 2010
Random book for me to read. See - Jeremy had to read a book about someone who started a business and how they did it - for his Law & Entrepreneuership class... so he went to the library and picked the shortest one he could find. :) And I decided to read it along with him - just because. It was alright. I found some parts - and some discussions with my husband - interesting about it. But for the most part I didn't care for the writing style.
May 27, 2010
The writing style bugged me at first, but I realized that is just who Mrs. Fields is and then I didn't have a problem with it. The single reason this book went from 3 stars to 4 is because I am CRAVING a Mrs. Fields cookie. I have just got to see if they are really as amazing as the book describes. We are planning a date to get one...
January 31, 2025
A reassuring tale of how relying on instinct, doing what you love, and taking the high road can translate into success.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews