The year was 1977, and 20-year-old Debbi Fields had just opened up Mrs. Fields Chocolate Chippery, her humble cookie shop in Palo Alto, California. Her passion for baking began in her teens, and by then she had perfected her recipe. Using the $5 an hour she made as a “ball girl,” she bought only the best ingredients.
But it wasn’t just the ingredients that made Fields’ cookies stand out. Unlike the hard, small, crumbly, mass-produced cookies common at the time, her cookies were served warm, soft-baked, gourmet-style, and oversized.
Baking despite the odds
Although friends and family loved Fields’ baking, no one seemed to believe it could become a business. According to the University of New Hampshire’s Rosenberg International Franchise Center, Fields had to approach several banks before finally securing financing to open her debut shop.
Even Debbi’s business-tycoon husband, Randall Fields, didn’t expect it to succeed. She later told the Los Angeles Times that he predicted she wouldn’t make a measly $50 in sales on opening day.
As noon approached without a single sale, it looked like Randall was right. Then, Debbi had an idea.
A Hail Mary tactic that turned into a genius marketing ploy
She walked out of the shop with a tray of her freshly baked signature cookies and began handing them to passersby on the street.
The strategy was pretty simple. Instead of trying to convince strangers to spend money on a cookie they had never tasted, Fields gave them a reason to come inside: let them try one first.
And it worked. After one sample, folks were hooked, and they went in to buy more. Fields would end up making $75 that day, surpassing her husband’s cynical expectations.
And the rest is cookie history
As we all know, that first-day success grew to be something much bigger. Fields continued building her business, and over the years it grew from a cookie shop to a multi-million-dollar cookie empire.
Fields became a celebrity of sorts, appearing on shows like Hollywood Squares and the new Mickey Mouse Club, writing several best-selling cookbooks, and appearing as a judge and mentor on Supermarket Superstar, a reality television series where culinary entrepreneurs compete to get their product into grocery stores. Although she sold the company to an investment firm in the ’90s, she remains the brand’s spokeswoman.
At its height, Mrs. Fields operated hundreds of locations across the United States, as well as in Canada, England, Japan, Australia, and Hong Kong. And that little opening-day experiment of free samples became an important (and delicious) part of the company’s identity.
Fields might not have had a business background, but she certainly had a natural entrepreneurial spirit. She had no real way to know whether free cookie samples would actually resonate with potential customers. Still, she believed she had something people wanted, and she was right. Her cookies would eventually become such a familiar part of American mall culture that it’s hard to picture a trip to the mall without encountering a Mrs. Fields sample. Which, of course, has a funny way of turning into a Mrs. Fields purchase.
Fields had plenty of reasons to doubt her idea, especially with everyone else doubting her. But she kept believing in it, proving that sometimes you just have to trust your own special recipe and know the result will eventually speak for itself.
