The corporate baker

Stephanie Vandegrift, 54 Dallas

By Anne Fisher, Fortune senior writer

(FORTUNE Magazine) -- In the early 1990s, as an account manager for A.C. Nielsen, Vandegrift used to give presentations to consumer goods companies on how their products were selling. On a whim, she hired a baker friend to make batches of cookies bearing the logos of clients like Dr Pepper and Eagle snacks. The gimmick proved so popular that "nobody ever missed those meetings," she recalls.

Then, a few years ago, after stints in sales and marketing management with Coca-Cola (Charts) and PricewaterhouseCoopers, Vandegrift suddenly found herself responsible for her severely ill sister and their mother. "I needed to get some control over my own schedule," she says now. "I remembered those cookies and thought, 'I bet I could make a business out of that.'" The first step was to convert a building on her property in Dallas into a commercial bakery, with the help of a loan backed by the Small Business Administration. Next, Vandegrift experimented until she found the ideal butter cookie recipe. Initially she put logos on each cookie by hand, using an overhead projector, but she soon found a faster, mechanized printing process. (The "ink" is food coloring.) A mass mailing of samples yielded her first clients - Exxon Mobil (Charts), Chase (Charts), the United Way of Texas, the Dallas Symphony - and the Cookie Co. was launched.

"The only really hard part has been not having lots of smart colleagues to bounce ideas around with," she says. Her solution: She joined the Dallas chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners for ideas and support. Now that her company, soon to be renamed Stephanie's Premium Bakery, is raking in the dough, what's next? In 2007, Vandegrift plans to expand into muffins.  Top of page

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Most stock quote data provided by BATS. Market indices are shown in real time, except for the DJIA, which is delayed by two minutes. All times are ET. Disclaimer. Morningstar: © 2018 Morningstar, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Factset: FactSet Research Systems Inc. 2018. All rights reserved. Chicago Mercantile Association: Certain market data is the property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved. Dow Jones: The Dow Jones branded indices are proprietary to and are calculated, distributed and marketed by DJI Opco, a subsidiary of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and have been licensed for use to S&P Opco, LLC and CNN. Standard & Poor's and S&P are registered trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC and Dow Jones is a registered trademark of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. All content of the Dow Jones branded indices © S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC 2018 and/or its affiliates.