Black & White Cookie Co.'s New Plan to Roll In the Dough

The Way Forward
As the economy improves, Auerbach has a renewed sense of enthusiasm to sell his concept and is positioning the company for growth. He says he has gotten several unsolicited requests to franchise the business from all over the country and even as far away as Israel.

Auerbach's ultimate vision is something similar to the business model behind Mrs. Fields: being able to bake the cookie in mass quantities at a facility, but then warm up and decorate them in the stores. He also hopes to sell the cookies in large chains like 7-Eleven and start franchising the idea as both a retail store and as non-traditional stores, such as food trucks and in theaters and arenas, like Barclays Center. He also wants to boost his catering effort.

The company is about to relaunch its e-commerce website and will soon stop the outsourcing of production (which means he will once again regain control of the actual recipe used for the cookies) in order to move production completely to one facility in Brooklyn, N.Y.

As a testament to how well his brand has done, Auerbach says this year was the second year he did the American Cancer Society's Taste of Hope, a food and beverage charity tasting event that features top New York restaurants and vendors. He says the cookies he brought were made from a different manufacturer than last year's cookies.

"The feedback did not change one bit. The branding overrode it. No one noticed the change. No one even considered that it could be different," he says. "It was the brand that mattered more than the actual product."

Catherine Kaputa, a brand expert and author of Breakthrough Branding: How Smart Entrepreneurs and Intrapreneurs Transform a Small Idea into a Big Brand, says the company's "strong visual identity" and "visual hook with the cookie itself" is a powerful advantage and memorable in customers' minds.

"Having a strong visual look that is memorable is powerful for a brand like the 'swoosh' for Nike, the pink ribbon for Susan B. Komen Race for the Cure, Christian Louboutin's red soles or Tiffany's blue box. So when you say the name Black and White Cookie, everyone sees the visual hook," she says.

But Kaputa says the company really needs to appeal to emotional branding with a story.

"Brands that become big brands wrap themselves in stories that connect emotionally with the target audience," she says. "What's the story behind how Black and White Cookies were created?"

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