BUSINESS
GILBERT SUN NEWS | AUGUST 8, 2021
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Gilbert home-based cookie business a sweet success BY SYDNEY MACKIE GSN Staff Writer
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espite opening her cookie business during the most severe months of the pandemic, Debbie George has found serendipitous success selling products out of her Gilbert home’s industrial kitchen. George’s company, The Cookie Mill, specializes in highly customizable vanilla bean sugar cookies sold for approximately $4.50 each. Since opening in January 2019, The Cookie Mill has found its clientele in both Gilbert’s local families and the town’s many businesses. “I put a mother’s love into each cookie, so I pretend like the recipient of each cookie is a child of mine and that’s how I decorate the cookies. Even when I’m the mom of an organization, I just really absorb the occasion,” George explained. An avid lifelong baker, George has always adored making sweets for her family’s special occasions but only found the motivation to transform her hobby into a business once she began helping her daughter sell pastries. “Back in 2018, we went to a decorating class, then she started selling cookies right away and I helped her for that first year. I bought her the first mixer, helped decorate cookies and package them around Christmas time, just supporting her as a mom would do,” George recounted. “I was going over to her house in Gilbert and I just really enjoyed the time I was spending with her and I fell in love with making cookies.” Soon, though, her daughter would have to focus on education and family while George dedicated herself completely to this culinary passion. “I sold my house in Mesa in December 2019 to move to Gilbert because it just really felt like the best family commu-
Debbie George runs a cookie business right out of her Gilbert home’s industrial kitchen (Pablo Robles/GSN Staff Photographer)
Debbie George said a mother’s love is an important ingredient in all her cookies. (Pablo
Robles/GSN Staff Photographer)
nity that we have here. What I’m trying to say is it just feels like a Gilbert company, decorating cookies and eventually my goal is to have a storefront here so that people can come in and decorate their own,” said George. As a one-woman operation, George’s earliest challenge came during her first Valentine’s Day rush.
“It was insanity, it was four solid days of me working. I only took 90-minute naps in my Lazy Boy chair and that’s all I got.” Now, George has perfected her holiday system to handle the needs of her rapidly expanding customer base. “I’ve done over 22,000 custom cookies in the last 18 months and people love
the soft bite along with the royal icing,” she said. “I think they come to me for the design and creativity, and many people have said that they can really feel the love in these cookies because what they don’t realize is when they’re describing the occasion I’m taking copious notes on name, dates, color and the overall feeling of an event or the recipient.” Growing from 150 customers last Christmas to 500 has required some serious home improvements, however. George hasn’t hesitated to make serious investments and changes to her home to complete orders seamlessly. “By April, I needed to upgrade so I bought a new Bosch mixer, I bought a cookie oven and put the residential oven and stove in the garage. Then, it was October or November of last year that I had to get rid of the couch and the living room to put stainless steel tables in there and now I’m at the end and the freezer is on the patio because there’s just no more room inside,” she said. George isn’t satisfied with just using the best equipment possible, she also firmly believes in only incorporating the best ingredients and safety precautions into her recipes. “I don’t use generic anything. I could buy a 25-pound bag of restaurant and hotel flour for $7 but I choose to buy King Arthur unbleached flour because it really translates in the taste and people appreciate that,” George said. Each product from The Cookie Mill comes individually sealed and for customers with gluten allergies or intolerance, George carefully sanitizes tools and tables while segregating these special gluten-free batches. Though her kitchen’s sanitary precautions such as constant mask and glove use haven’t lifted, George is excited to
see COOKIES page 22
