FE: Sweet Martha's

"What have I done?” Martha Rossini Olson asked herself out loud as she hung up the phone with the Minnesota State Fair.

Last week I joined my friend at the Great Minnesota Get Together—AKA The State Fair in my hometown of St. Paul, MN. I grew up with family visits to the Fair and core traditions that I shared with friends and my first niece as part of her birthday. I learned to try Fair food under the August sun as we mapped out a path to some of our favorites. You can always find your way to Sweet Martha’s Cookie Jar by following the smell of fresh chocolate chip cookies. As a dairy state we pair those with ice cold milk and big smiles.

One of my St. Paul neighborhood legends has a healthy entrepreneur vibe.

My 9-year-old nephew asked me…” Is Sweet Martha real?!” She sure is!



Early on Martha owned a frozen yogurt franchise with her husband, Gary, and longed to have a booth at the fair. She had applied to sell frozen yogurt at The Fair for many years, but her application was always rejected. This time it was approved—with one condition—Martha was invited to sell chocolate chip cookies, not yogurt.



She had to say yes to one of the largest fairs in the country. So, Martha enthusiastically agreed to sell cookies. Then panic set in. She didn’t have her own chocolate chip cookie recipe—they served ready-made cookie crumbles at the yogurt shop.

She quickly shifted into problem-solving mode. She sought advice from vendors she and Gary worked with at the shop. Then she began collecting, testing and tweaking recipes until she created the perfect chewy-gooey-crispy-edge cookie.



Martha’s husband and their close friend Neil O’Leary started building a cookie stand and scouting equipment to rent. There was staffing to consider throughout the fair’s 12-day run. Both the Olsons and the O’Learys recruited friends and family members to work the booth, filling dozens of shifts to make, bake and serve cookies.



As Martha prepared for the fair, her excitement grew. She’d grown up a few miles from the fairgrounds and her family made a tradition of going together every year. They often went more than once. She looked forward to it all—the attractions, the midway, the people-watching, the food. Though she and Gary hadn’t started a family of their own just yet, she imagined what it might be like to share the fair with their kids one day. While she loved teaching art, and the yogurt franchise had been successful, she was energized by the idea of building something special for her family.



When the Minnesota State Fair started—just three weeks after getting word her vendor application was approved—Sweet Martha’s Cookie Jar was ready! Martha’s treats were being gobbled up by thousands of fairgoers and they kept coming back for more. When the Olsons and O’Learys fully realized they had a lucrative seasonal business on their hands, they officially became partners. And the day after the fair ended, they all returned to their regular jobs.



Before the pandemic, Sweet Martha's Cookie Jar brought in $3 million over the fair's 12-day run, a figure the company may very well surpass this year, now that it's expanded from two stands to three. The original two outsell every other vendor there, which flies in the face of everything you'd expect to be successful at such a festival…that is, they're not deep-fried or served on a stick.

"All the time, people will say, 'you know, I really like

oatmeal,' and I say, 'you know, I do too—we actually have those in

grocery stores [as frozen dough], but we can hardly handle just chocolate

chip,'" Olson explains. "That's the truth. We cannot give people more

than one choice, because our lines get so long, so this just works out better

for us."

Focusing on chocolate chip allows Sweet Martha's Cookie Jar to hit on that economic sweet spot: Economies of scale. Every aspect of the business has been meticulously planned to bake as many cookies as possible, as quickly as possible. When Sweet Martha's started back in 1979, they prided themselves on baking 200 cookies in 12 minutes. Today, they average about 30,000 during that time frame.



Early on the experience lit a fire in Martha. She couldn’t stop thinking about how to make the business better. Over the years, they fine-tuned the recipe, streamlined their processes, added take-home buckets, and made it a goal to attract employees who shared their values—a commitment to community, quality, and hard work. And the original partners all believe in walking the walk. After more than three decades in business together, they continue to roll up their sleeves and work alongside their staff every day of the fair.

Sweet Martha’s Cookie Jar generates millions in sales annually and has earned the title of most popular food attraction at the Minnesota State Fair. Hot, fresh chocolate chip cookies baked on the spot are available at the fair and Sweet Martha’s frozen cookie dough is available in a variety of flavors all year long at grocery stores nationwide.

What about that vision Martha had early on for creating a legacy for her family? The next generation of leaders—including the Olsons’ and O’Learys’ adult children—are just as passionate about the business. The company’s succession plan includes transitioning them into key roles over the next few years. Until then, Martha continues to look forward to her end-of-summer tradition at the Minnesota State Fair.



Even at 9:30 a.m. on a Friday morning, with 28 servers manning the registers at the grandstand location, the lines were 5 to 6 people deep. This quickly turned into a mob scene by late afternoon. And that's after adding the third location at the north end of the park to aid in crowd control. As the rush sets in, it's one employee's job to replenish the plastic pails—which hold about 4 dozen cookies apiece. That way the cookie servers never have to pause to hunt down extra buckets—and you're never more than minutes away from a mountain of warm cookies.



Things really hit a turning point about 15 years ago, when Sweet Martha's opened its largest location, a custom-built shop to handle the massive amounts of foot traffic in the heart of the fair. (While Texas is often considered the largest state fair in the U.S., Minnesota's is open for a shorter timespan and has a larger daily attendance. On Sept. 4, 233,303 people

crammed its streets, making it the second-busiest Sunday in fair history.)

"After [the grandstand location] opened, we started seeing bigger and bigger crowds, and that's when it really felt like we were onto something," Olson says.

At this point, production is so massive Sweet Martha's employs 550 people across its three stands during the 12-day period. During the rest of the year, the company scales back, taking on occasional events in the Twin Cities, where they sell chocolate chip cookies out of a small trailer.

"We wanted the cookies to be similar to the fair's—fresh out of the oven, and we didn't want to add preservatives—so that's why we did frozen dough instead of pre-baked cookies," she explains.



Warm cookies have been a crucial part of the business strategy—because who can resist a fresh-from-the-oven cookie, especially when it's just a short walk away from an All-You-Can-Drink milk bar? Equally important, though, is the way the cookies are presented.



Packaging is key

Even if the fair's streets are so congested you can't see more than five feet in front of you—which happens on weekends—you can still easily find Sweet Martha's. You could always scan the skies for the dessert equivalent of a bat signal—Martha's winking animatronic cookies that hang above each shop—or you can follow the trail of smashed cookies.

Olson didn't intend to ever have a cookie down—she's passionate about not contributing to littering or messes at the fair—but given the signature way the treats are presented, it happens.

Cookies are sold in two sizes: In a cone-shaped paper container, which holds about a dozen treats, or the massive plastic pail.

"We thought about selling them in a paper boat or a bag, but we wanted it to be something people had to hold, that other people would see," Olson says.

After people kept asking for larger sizes, Sweet Martha's introduced the take-home pail, deciding to wedge the lid between the handle and the edge of the bucket, so it could act as a backboard to pile up even more cookies, creating a towering display that would stand out in a sea of over-the-top fair foods.



She's Taking Traditional Treats to the Tech-Obsessed.

While chocolate chip cookies may seem old school—particularly at a fair that's selling deep-fried Oreos, acai bowls and an Americanized take on Taiyaki, a fish-shaped cake stuffed with ice cream—Sweet Martha's edge comes from its forward-thinking marketing strategy.



Sweet Martha's joined social media and launched a "Tale of the Pail" contest, asking people to show off how they use the plastic containers after the cookies are gone. (A few submissions: As a tool for building sandcastles, a home for Lego collections, even a first-aid kit for the car, according to MinnPost) The whole competition highlighted Sweet Martha's savvy: Keep using the buckets, keep thinking about us until next year.

The brand added filters as well, letting people frame their fair memories with Sweet Martha's cookie illustrations. That way, even if people aren't right in front of a shop, there's a trigger to make them think of grabbing a bucket. That, combined with a sense of scarcity—you can only get a bucket 12 days out of the year—and the nostalgia classic chocolate chip cookies evoke, make the brand a textbook example of marketing savvy. It's no wonder Sweet Martha's sells 1 million cookies a day.

"It's almost a rite of passage for people grabbing their cookies on the way home," State Fair License Administration Manager Dennis Larson told the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal.

Like watching someone sculpt 90-pound blocks of butter into the face of the local dairy princess, or checking out see art with a message, or hanging out with the monster in the AC of the Haunted Mansion…it isn't the Minnesota State Fair without Sweet Martha's!

To learn more about Martha’s business, visit SweetMarthas.com.



Love to see you at the Minnesota State Fair next year!

Thank you for reading and we welcome your comments below!



Akasha Lin

Akasha Garnier for #TheWishwall

Author, Brand Expert, Filmmaker

http://www.akashagarnier.com

#ShineThroughtheNoise

Photo: Sweet Martha’s

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