My friend Nina is always waxing rhapsodic about Barefoot Coffee, which is near her house and which has baristas whose sole job in life it is to make coffee. (And they take that responsibility Very Seriously.) Recently a franchise outlet of Barefoot opened near me, so I decided to go check it out as a possible writing spot (upside: very comfy, many wall outlets; downside: farther away than other cafes near my house).
More important than what I thought of their coffee, however, was the sweet treat I discovered there: chocolate sea salt cookies. I munched on one and thought, “Wow, this is an awesome cookie.” Then I read the ingredients and I thought, “WOW, THIS IS A TOTALLY AWESOME COOKIE.”
Because in addition to being a great balance between chewy and crispy, in addition to being just chocolatey enough, and in addition to being 4 small cookies in a resealable package (making portion control easier)…it was vegan.
The kindest way I can put it is this: the vast majority of vegan baked goods I’ve had, both that I’ve made and that I’ve bought commercially, have sucked. Big time. There’s a company that has their products in the checkout aisle of Whole Foods that look delicious and taste like cardboard. So generally it’s a big turnoff for me. These, however, were awesome.
Which made me try many other of this company’s treats. And they were all really, really good.
I met Nina for a writing date one day at the Barefoot near her house and I discovered the cookies were there too. I bought a pack and stuck one in Nina’s mouth. “Try this,” I said, after the fact.
“Dfaj fajgapto.” Then she nodded.
“What?”
After a quick drink of coffee, she said, “That’s a good cookie.”
I was so enamored of the products by this company I tried I contacted the baker via her email and asked if I could talk to her about her business. And maybe I could get that chocolate sea salt cookie recipe from her. We met at Barefoot in Santa Clara. Nina showed up too, because she wanted to meet the baker too.
Hway-ling met us and immediately offered us samples of the products she was working on: a vanilla shortbread cookie made without wheat flour, and a pistachio shortbread. One of these was vegan too, which I thought was a neat trick with shortbread, but I honestly couldn’t tell it was. After she finished dropping off her wares and leaving a few samples of new products for the cafe manager, she sat down with us.
She is very friendly and funny and chatty. I loved talking to her. She didn’t want her picture taken (I tried, but pictures of hands over a face are not exciting), so sadly I don’t have that to share.
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A lot of us have “fans” of our baking, but very few of us decide to make a business out of our baking. How did you decide to go into business?
No one ever actually said that to me.
After my youngest didn’t need me at home any more, I thought, What would I like to do? I decided to start this business.
(Hway-ling told us that she was a lawyer for many years, both before and after having kids, but she was done with the whole legal thing after the last left her nest. Nina is also a lawyer, and she is always interested in hearing about what other lawyers do after they finish with that.)
What does it take to start a small baked-goods business? I assume there’s more to it than just baking a lot of stuff in your kitchen and putting it into plastic bags.
You have to get a Food Safety Certificate. Take a class, take a test, get a certification, get a license. There’s the Environmental Health Certificate, $750/yr. Pay a business tax to city of San Jose. If you form a business as an limited liability corporation (LLC) through Nolo, every year there’s a $800 tax, Before you can rent space, you have to have insurance. The agent said to me, “You have no track record and you have no experience.”
And there are things like: Who do I sell to? What do I package in? What are the labeling requirements? I didn’t know about any of that.
There are lots of barriers to entry. There’s lots of requirements but it’s not always clear whose requirements they are.
Do you bake in your kitchen? If so, did you have to get it certified somehow? If you make your stuff somewhere else, what place do you use and how did you find it?
You have to have a business license. You have to cook in a commercial kitchen that’s licensed. I use a rent by the hour commercial kitchen used by caterers, hot dog vendors, all sorts of people. I met a family cooking for their daughter’s shower or some big event. You could do a sitcom set in one of these commercial kitchens.
In New York, where I used to live, you can get your own kitchen checked out and certified. But not here.
I also saw in that SF Weekly article that you began with recipes and techniques you found on the internet, but you’ve branched out from there. What do you do to create recipes?
At the kitchen where I rent there were two guys with a food truck. So I asked them, do you need a dessert? They asked for three things I didn’t know how to make. Peanut brittle, pralines, and something else. I got some recipes, I practiced, I gave it to them and they said, “Yeah, we can use this.” From the peanut brittle I experimented with other things. The stoves at the kitchen are gas and have no marks. You have to eyeball the flame. You have to use different kinds of pots. You have to be aware of the ambient air temperature. In the winter the kitchen can be 50 and in the summers… To go into a larger production requires more, bigger equipment.
(She makes a ton of different kinds of brittle now, some of which she sells through Ourtisan.com. In case you’re wondering about the packaging there, the company name was Snapdragon and is now Sweetdragon.)
One of the things I love about these cookies is that they’re vegan. Was this important to you when you started or just came about as part of the recipe you used?
I think vegans are hungry. No, I wasn’t intended to make them vegan. I started with a sandy sable cookie. I didn’t like the texture so I changed it to a soft cookie. Then I said it has no eggs, maybe I could take the butter out. So I experimented with different oils. For these I ended up with coconut oil.
What ingredients do you use? I assume you’re not going to Lunardi’s and buying King Arthur Flour from there.
I shop everywhere. I get a lot of things from Whole Foods. If you buy a case of something there, you get 10% discount. I shop at Cash and Carry. I order online.
How did you pick where to sell?
I read about BF in the paper years ago as a high-quality local cafe. I stopped by the Roaster, near my house. I made a note to myself to go by every week with a sample…then I forgot. I made some candy and took it by, and they were ready tobuy. Now I’ve gotten calls from some local places, like a cafe in San Jose and some shops in SF, like Park & Pond — they only sell local vendors within 100 miles. There’s a new candy store in Bernal Heights — Rock Candy Snack Shop.
How do you find out about things like shelf life?
I test it all myself. Put it in a bag, mark it, put it on a shelf…I put things in the freezer to see what happens. We’re always finding things in the freezer.
I also try something of every batch of products I make, just to make sure I didn’t substitute salt for sugar.
Do you do all of your baking and experimenting in the test kitchen?
I still bake at home. I experiment and my family gets to eat the experiments. I also volunteer at Martha’s Kitchen. There are lots of volunteers there Tuesday and Wednesday mornings and they’re often my guinea pigs.
Is there any chance I could get the recipe for your chocolate sea salt cookies?
No.
