In 1977, a woman entrepreneur started a business in her kitchen with a homemade chocolate chip cookie recipe and a dream. Could she have imagined that she would become a real life legend, known around the world for high-quality, delicious treats?
Armed with real butter, an American Dream and an inability to accept ‘no’ as an answer, Debbi Fields opened Mrs. Fields Chocolate Chippery in 1977.
On her first day, she set a goal to sell fifty dollars’ worth of cookies – and she was determined to do just that. By midday, she hadn’t made a dollar. So Fields’ took to the streets offering delicious morsels for free. Some would say it was her charm, others would say it was solely the magic of her baked goods, others will argue that it was her determination, whatever the reason she enticed her samplers back to her store and the rest, they say, is history. Fields suggests that she knew she made it when her customers began calling in sick. What began as one store front grew into 700 stores in ten countries.
Mrs Fields Chocolate Chippery opened it's doors in 1977. Today, there are over 700 stores in ten countries.
In 1990 Mrs. Fields' Cookies announced an agreement with the Marriott Corporation which allowed Marriott to own at least 60 stores to bake and sell the popular bakery products. Marriott gained the exclusive right to build Mrs. Fields' Cookies stores in airports, hotels, and highway travel plazas and pay the cookie company approximately five percent of its gross sales.
Mrs. Fields' in 1990 operated 45 international stores in Canada, Australia, Japan, Hong Kong, and the United Kingdom, and it planned to expand worldwide using various joint ventures or licensing contracts which promised profits without significant investment. By 1992 the firm had added stores in Thailand, and its seventh overseas market started in Mexico City with a licensing agreement with Pasteleria El Molino S.A.
In 1990 the company began remodeling some stores to allow more display space for new packaging products, cookie jars, and tins. To stimulate gift buying as well as cookie purchases, teddy bear maker Gund was commissioned to make little bears like those on the cookie tins. With new designs and decor, Debbi Fields intended to create boutiques or European-style cafés that were more colorful and exciting.
Join us in celebrating 40 delicious years of Mrs Fields.
