Molly Bz Reinventing Gourmet Cookies, One Flavour at a Time

It is so good to be here. Thank you for having me.

Wow, it has been quite a journey. So I actually am in Alaska right now. I live in Alaska and I lived in a little tiny rural town of just three thousand people and I found myself down to my last hundred and fifty dollars. I was a single mom and had to completely start my life over at forty five years old and I had to figure out how I was going to feed my son. So I started making really weird gourmet cookies and they just took off like a rocket. I started doing like 20 boxes a week just on Facebook, like who’s having a birthday or whatever and people would buy and then all of a sudden it blew up to 45 boxes a day. I had been shouted out by Buzzfeed and from there we went into like little coffee shops and then I had to move to the big city of Anchorage and had one bakery help me and then I had two then three then four and then I had to find a co-packer so I googled cookie factory because I’m thinking Willy Wonka in my head, know, and actually.

Three years into it, I launched nationally. So now in three years, I became a national brand and it’s just been, obviously there’s a lot of information in between there that got me to that place. But yeah, that’s kind of the gist of it. It’s been amazing.

Thank you.

Sure. So it was really important to me to like have a really good, soft, yummy cookie. I actually started before even Crumble did. We were like the first to the gate as far as putting fruity pebbles on your cookies or all these things. so mine are actually individually wrapped. So there’s always my stories on the back. So I really want to inspire people that they can start over at any age. So it’s on there, tells about it. And we’re the very first gourmet individual wrapped cookies to hit stores in America so you can have like some of the other ones that are not gourmet they are just like the basic choco chip or whatever but mine are like this one be cordial is my cheetos cheery with amerado extract in it with zero alcohol but tastes like amerado and then cinnamon sweet chocolate but this is for like christmas really but and i have nine different flavours we also have a whole line of boba doodles too which are little bags of little bite -sized cookies with a different flavour boba in them.

Good.

I love it. Let’s get you some cookies.

We’ll overnight you.

So right now the Straight Fire, let me see if I have one here, I do. The Straight Fire cookie is our best seller. It used to be the Boss Band, which had bacon on it. We have fresh, smoky bacon, but the Straight Fire, what I do every year is I look at what the food trends are at the beginning of the year, the top 10 food trends, and then I take two or three of them and I turn it into a cookie. So when I did this one two and a half years ago, maybe three years ago, It was a s’mores was on. This is my rendition of s’mores. So we have graham cracker, crumbs, semi -sweet, and then when I put a big, huge marshmallow on top here, I’ll show you. Sorry, the packaging’s a little noisy.

We’ll get into it. there, see the bottom is not like there’s no darkness or whatever. And you can see the marshmallow right on top there. And then like they’re very soft and gooey and delicious. And then here’s a hack. Stick it in your air fryer for like two minutes and it’s unbelievable. So good.

that we are gourmet. you know, and it’s weird because when I started this business, I didn’t know I was going to be competing with the big kids like Chips Ahoy and Tates or all these bigger brands, you know, because I’m just me, Molly from Alaska. You know, I didn’t anticipate that was going to happen, but I’m on the shelf next to him now. So it is a thing.

But mine are different. Like we have one that has hot Cheetos. It’s called the hot mess and it’s sun dried mangoes with white chocolate. And then we roll it in hot Cheetos before we bake it. So just having the innovation and new fun flavours is what makes us really stand out.

I think it has been the endorsements that I’ve gotten that have just been organic. like being on BuzzFeed and blasting that out on my social media, like, my gosh, we were featured on Buzzfeed. But then from there, I am the reason they came up with Clickbait on the internet. So if it’s Clickbait, I’m like, what’s that? I gotta have one of those. And that’s a cute person. But there was this thing that said Forbes was looking for people for their startup hub. This was back in 2019. And I thought, I’ll just apply for that. Why not? If they tell me no, I’m right where I’m at, right? So I went ahead and applied for that and I got accepted. And so I went to the Detroit 30 under 30 and I’m like, I am not under 30 you guys. And they’re like, no, this startup is different. I said, okay. So I got to go there and meet influencers and things and that started kind of the ball rolling. Being having that Forbes endorsement was huge. I was one of the top 150 startups of 2019. And then we got a Food Network star on our team, Chef Brian Duffy.

And then from there, I got Every once in a while I would check my spam mail on my email. Do you ever do that to see like who’s trying to get a hold of me? And it was something like you’ve been invited to have your product at the Oscars. And I’m like, come on. Like, it’s so ridiculous. But I’m going to just see. So I’m like, tell me more about this. And so they did. And it turns out it was legitimate. And so I got to fly to LA during 2020. So we had to mask up or whatever. But I got to be there and they used my cookies. I go into the gifting sweets and.

And I met a bunch of stars that I didn’t know who they were, but they just loved cookies and that’s all that mattered. But then that night I’m on TV and I’m watching these people like get Oscars that loved my cookies. So that was pretty neat. And so from there, then once you’re in one of those, then they invite you to the other one. So then I got to the Emmys and then to the Grammys and then Wheel of Fortune contacted me and said, can we have you on our wheel? I was on the wheel like, I don’t know, like 30 times a Pat Sajak would say.

You’ve won Molly Bz cookies, you know, or whatever. And it was cookies and milk, which is a fun little combo and just things like that. So it’s just like endorsement after endorsement after endorsement that has just been incredible. It’s been amazing.

Check your spam mail.

You know, the biggest challenge is people taking advantage of you when they see that you’re starting to do really well. You get reached out by people and, you know, just recently I had to deal with this and someone said that they would be an amazing advisor for me and help me because they would have been through, you know, they had worked from bigger companies or whatever. And so I really wanted that advice. I thought that that would be a great partnership to have with him or whatever. And he just like dropped off after he was going to help me. And then once we got into Costco and into Walmart and all these things, he turned up again and said, here’s my contract. And he wanted like 1 % of all my sales. He wanted 1 % of my company every year until I exit. Plus he wanted 3 % of all my Walmart. It was like, I sent it to my COO and I’m like, I feel like this is like he’s trying to take advantage of me. He said he absolutely is, you know? And so we had the hard conversation and I like him. like, thought he’s the nicest guy ever, but it was just.

I can’t do that. That’s not a smart business move, but that happens on a pretty consistent basis. You really have to have the right team, core team, or else you’re going to get taken advantage of.

So I plan to exit in 2027. And with that exit money, I’ve already started a nonprofit called the Blakeley Foundation. And what we’re doing with a Blakeley Foundation is I’ve started an academy that has been approved by the state of Alaska, because that’s where I still am. And it is an entry level academy. So it’s teaching kids that they’ve aged out of foster care. They don’t have anywhere to go because the people who were fostering them aren’t getting money anymore. So a lot of times they just kick them out and then you have homelessness.

Because they weren’t trained, they don’t know what’s going on, they just, know, a lot of these foster kids, it’s not their fault what they’re into or what’s happened to them. Their circumstance is not something that they ever signed up for. So, this will give them housing and then it’s going to teach them every single part of the restaurant. So, every three weeks they learn a different thing. They’ll do hostessing, then they’ll do serving, and then they’ll do prep Cook, Line Cook, and even how to start their own brand. And it’s a whole course for a year, but it will also give them housing. And then in the end, we give them a suit or an outfit. We help them with their resume. We will have people that own restaurants and things come in and vet employees, because people need employees right now. And even furthermore, they need trained employees. So it’s called the entry level program. And that is where I will be putting my passion into as soon as I exit.

Thank you.

Thank you. Well, God gets the glory in everything I do. Without Him, I’d be lost, lost. absolutely.

Thanks for having me. It’s been fun. Thank you so much.