At first, it was just a challenge from a friend: make an amazing American style chocolate chip cookie in London. One cookie becomes two, three, four—suddenly everybody wants their own batch. Soon enough it’s in a food show, and then it can be found in Whole Foods Markets and Targets overseas. Kathryn Bricken is the Founder and CEO of Doughlicious the London Dough Co., a gourmet brand specializing in healthy cookie dough. In the UK, they have lines of ready-to-bake cookie dough available in stores and pre-baked cookies that can be found on both airlines and trainlines. After debuting in London, Doughlicious’ most recent product—cookie dough and gelato bites—has seen tremendous success overseas.
As of December 2023, Doughlicious has taken its frozen snack international, beginning on shelves in select U.S. Whole Foods Market locations. This past April, their cookie-dough-covered gelato balls became available at all Whole Foods Markets nationwide, followed up six months later in October with a large-scale rollout at Target stores across the country. And while her brand has grown, Bricken has made sure to keep her passion alive just as it was the day she made her first cookie.
Public service to product
Bricken wasn’t always selling cookies, though. In fact, she used to just give them away. What began as a challenge from a friend to make an American style chocolate chip cookie in the UK led Bricken to the development of a small business—smaller than local—where she would coordinate with her friends to sell them dough. Because of her passion for eating, she decided to turn to better-for-you ingredients so that people could enjoy snacks with minimal worry for their health.
“Some people eat to live; I live to eat,” says Bricken. “I’m constantly thinking about food and what I can eat, but I also want to be healthy.” Her healthy values mixed with her passion for baking created her own recipe for a sustainable startup.
Even when Bricken moved her business to a larger scale, she maintained her home-grown passion, opting to be a part of the manufacturing process herself to ensure it was true to her vision. With her own savings, she bought a small factory with two machines to make sure she was as involved in production as possible. “I realized that if you’re not the one doing it, then the quality is never going to be what you want it to be,” says Bricken.
This mindset was huge in her business’ growth. It helped her optimize her product by looking at it from three objective angles:
- Why is this product better than the others?
- Does it have any unique selling points?
- Is there a market for this product? Do people want it?
Figuring out the answers to these questions was the key to transitioning from a 1,000 square foot facility to 22,000 square feet facility.
“You have to love your product so much that you’re going to live and breathe it every day.”
Focusing on your own investments
Passion alone can’t account for all of Bricken and Doughlicious’ success. Alongside her love for her product, there was also rigorous execution. Because she was raising the business from the ground up, Bricken and her team were reinvesting every cent that they made. At the same time, they had to focus on new ways to bring in support, such as a capital raise from friends and family.
“Until we had full legs to stand on, we would self-fund.”
Bricken also notes that marketing is also of the utmost importance. “There’s a lot of noise out there, so you have to market your product,” she states. A big part of reinvesting goes into determining whether your brand wants to pay influencers to advertise your product, or what promotions you put the product on, or any other modes of being seen that aren’t necessarily free. Regardless of what marketing method you choose, you must understand your ideal customer and their wants. In doing so, you will be strengthening your self-investment.
Go at your own pace
As nice as it would be to hit international success in less than a year like Doughlicious, Bricken also recognizes this rapid growth as a trade-off. “We’ve been really fortunate that the journey has gone quickly, but also it comes with a lot of work,” she says. “I wouldn’t always recommend growing as quickly as we did. I think we’ve made mistakes which could have been avoided by not learning to say no at the right time.”
For Doughlicious, this mistake was a lack of brand awareness during the beginning stages, which Bricken notes manifested in the form of their launch in Australia. Due to the geographic distance between the UK and Australia and the vastly different time zones, the team struggled to manage the product, sales, marketing and shelf availability. Had they waited, they might have been more aware and experienced with handling their brand—even if that meant postponing their expansion plans.
“It’s important to say no. Once you get on the shelf, you have to get off the shelf,” Bricken says.
In other words, you need to be aware of what your product is capable of. Your team should know both how to distribute the product and how to make people want to buy it. Once you’ve figured that much out, then it’s time to start taking your passion to the shelves.
Did all that cookie talk make you hungry?
If you’re curious about Doughlicious’ cookie dough-wrapped gelato snacks and want to find them near you, search your region on the Doughlicious website!
For more features specializing in food and drink, read our interview with Alessia Antinori on inheriting a 26th-generation wine company.
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