BEL AIR, Md. — At Bmore Kitchen, Steve Anderson and his staff are putting sheets and sheets of cookies into the ovens, turning the soft balls of dough into moist cookies.
While the cookies bake, Anderson's partner Shannon Peterson is assembling boxes to deliver and ship out the batches from their company, Cozy Cookies.
"All of this was learned on YouTube and through so much testing and eating cookies. I’ve probably gained 50 pounds since we started this business," said Anderson.
The couple came up with the idea for Cozy Cookies when Anderson was taking business classes and had to develop a fake business plan for a cookie company. "I obviously took that way too seriously," he said.
They wanted to get a loan for a food truck to sell their cookies, but the pandemic made that nearly impossible.
"We decided to bake and sell the cookies out of our home and deliver them through COVID."
Turns out, homemade cookies were just the thing people craved to get them through COVID lockdowns, restrictions and the general upheaval of their lives. In 10 weeks, Anderson and Peterson sold 10,000 cookies.
"It's always shocking to have people really believe in you and like the product," said Peterson.
"We believed it would do well but to actually see people freak out over it was definitely a surprise," said Anderson.
The couple moved their operations out of their home kitchen and to Bmore Kitchen, a co-working space for food entrepreneurs. In two years, they have baked and sold more than 200,000 cookies and expanded from selling three flavors to 12, plus two specialty flavors a month.
"The story of our business is we’ve never had the money that we needed to push forward but we’ve somehow always figured out how to move forward," said Anderson.
And the next step forward is opening a space at the Armory Marketplace in Bel Air on April 2, a true pinch-me moment for this couple who started their business with nothing more than a little faith, pounds of cookie dough and the will to succeed.
"We started with actually zero dollars, no investments, zero dollars, in our kitchen. Through Facebook ads and figuring out how to make cookies we never made before, we’ve sold 200,000 of them, and we’re now going to open up a store and be a fully fledged business in our community," said Anderson. "So I would say we are literal proof that anybody can do this."
Cozy Cookies will be open at the Armory from Wednesday-Sunday from 2-9 p.m. They deliver to select zip codes in Harford County and also ship nationwide.
