Goodie News Archives - Page 4 of 15 - Goodie Girl

Fashion 360 Brunch

GOODIE GIRL COOKIES were excited to be featured at this month’s Fashion 360 Brunch, a monthly event that brings fashion directly to the consumer. We were proud to help support this month’s brunch with another woman-owned brand, Heavenly Seduction, that makes clothing to make women feel comfortable at any size.

Goodie Girl Cookies Announces Partnership with Art Start

Gluten free cookie brand Goodie Girl Cookies, today shared news of a commitment to support the efforts of non-profit Art Start, an organization using the creative arts to transform young, at risk lives. We will support weekly music as therapy and visual art programming at family shelters in New York, providing plenty of cookies for snack time as well.

Founded by mompreneur and Tribeca resident Shira Berk, Goodie Girl Cookies is a homegrown brand that got its start in a community bakery in NYC and is now headquartered in Ridgefield, NJ. We believe in the transformative power of art as creative expression and the simple joy derived from the goodness of a sweet snack.

As a kid, I was always bursting with creativity, whether in the kitchen, on stage, singing or painting. Grateful for the ways I could to explore my own artistry, I am passionate about connecting children with opportunities for imaginative exploration and expression, said Berk. At Goodie Girl, we truly believe art can change lives and are proud to have the opportunity to support such a great movement.

Art Start nurtures the voices, hearts and minds of New York City’s underserved youth through consistent creative workshops inside homeless shelters, alternative to incarceration programs, and partnering youth agencies.

Art Start kids live in city shelters, on the streets, are involved in court cases, or surviving with parents in crisis. Through Art Starts daily creative arts workshops taking place inside some of the citys loneliest places, at-risk youth collaborate with local teaching artists and educators who donate their time and guidance to nurture the youths creativity and talents.

Learn more about our community engagement initiatives at https://blog.goodiegirl.com/portfolio-item/art-start/.

What happens when customers don’t share your vision?

Problem Solvers
By Jason Feifer, Entrepreneur.com

What happens when customers don?t share your vision? It can be an emotional blow. Here you poured your heart into a product, only to find that customers want something different. Shira Berk faced this problem with her gluten-free cookie company, Goodie Girl Cookies. Taste tests were positive but sales were stagnant, and Burke realized it was because her personal branding touches were confusing consumers. So she made big, hard changes — and sales grew to more than $3 million. We learn how she did it.

Winning Recipe: How A ‘Cookiepreneur’ Found Her Perfect Partner

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Shira Berk knew she could bake a winning gluten-free cookie. Her loyal customers flocking to Goodie Girl, her small caf at the Jewish Community Project in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood, were proof of that. But she wanted her little business, founded in 2010, to be so much more. She wanted to sell lots of cookies, in lots of places.

Berk was relentless, if not terribly focused, as she plunged headlong into the food world. A self-professed foodie who used to do publicity for punk rock bands, she had played around with making gourmet popcorn at the same time she was experimenting with gluten-free cookie recipes. (She isn’t gluten-free herself but developed her first gluten-free cookie at a customer’s request.)

Pretty early on, Berk realized that what she really needed was a partner, someone with capital and deep expertise in the food business. Finding the right one wasn’t easy, though. She got close to signing on the dotted line with a couple of people. “But there was something in my gut that felt wrong,” she tells me.

She networked like crazy with other entrepreneurs and found some food-industry mentors that helped her focus on what she did best. And, in her third year in business, she joined a food incubator program in Queens to make Goodie Girl Cookies a real thing. She even won a free booth at the Fancy Food Show in a competition sponsored by the New York Economic Development Corporation and the Specialty Food Association.

“This was a total game changer,” Berk says.

At the trade show her mentor, Jerry Bello, then the CEO of Brownie Brittle, introduced her to Greg Toufayan, one of the owners of the nearly century-old family business Toufayan Bakeries. The company got its start making pita bread in the 1920s and has since expanded into bagels and other baked goods and has a thriving private-label business.

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