Mom Mixes Cookies With Patience

The Herald News:

Linda Hardin started with a handful of wheat- and dairy-free recipes, but learned that growing her business depends on perseverance and patience as much as a good oatmeal-cranberry cookie.

“I was warned this was a real tough business, and it is, but I’m hoping to sneak in through the back door with the Internet,” she said.

After months of negotiating with food service companies, school districts and other facilities, Hardin decided to offer her frozen cookie dough online at www.chrysaliscookies.com, while she continues to try to sell to institutional kitchens.

Hardin founded her business on family recipes. When the former Amoco biochemist learned her children had food allergies, she started tinkering in the kitchen. She didn’t want her kids — now in junior-high — to feel different, so she found ways to make the same homemade goodies everyone else ate, except her treats were wheat- and dairy-free.

She sells dough for chocolate chip, cranberry oatmeal, vanilla, chocolate crinkle and molasses spice cookies.

The cookies, which use whole-grain organic oat flour, proved such a hit with friends and family that Hardin was told repeatedly she should sell them.

At first, she decided to sell frozen, pre-portioned cookie dough to the food service industry, rather than focusing on the consumer market.

“When you get into retail, you have packaging and advertising costs,” she said. “Stores have slotting fees, fees just to allow you to be on the shelf. I decided I might go that avenue, but I need to make some money first.”