Mrs. Fields: Her Life as the Top Cookie : The Chips Never Seem to be Down for the Smiling Founder of the Multimillion--Dollar Food Empire
There is a black-and-white photograph of Randy Fields’ wife hanging on the wall of his office. In the picture, she is standing behind a podium, smiling her brilliant 1,000-watt smile, her fists raised in the air.
“That,” Randy Fields says emphatically, “is Debbi. Of all the thousands of pictures that have been taken of her, that says it all. It gives me goose bumps just to look at it.”
If the essence of Debbi Fields can be captured in a picture, it might as well be this one. The president and CEO of Mrs. Fields Inc. does more than shepherd her wildly successful, multimillion-dollar cookie empire. As company founder, she is also its spokeswoman, head cheerleader, quality-control fanatic, employee booster, demanding boss and even occasional over-the-counter cookie saleswoman.
Kids and Cookies
Now in the midst of personal and professional expansion--she is pregnant with her fourth child and the company has just launched into candy-making--she has written her autobiography, entitled appropriately enough, “One Smart Cookie,” a true American success story of a girl from East Oakland, daughter of a welder and the youngest of five girls, who always felt unpopular, who lacked a college degree and was labeled a low-achiever but who nevertheless managed to rise out of it all at the age of 20 and, using a borrowed $50,000, begin to build her dream.
Today, at 30, Debbi Fields remains the driving force behind a company that last year did $87 million in sales. The dream is clearly alive. And the woman who remains relentlessly perky and boundlessly energetic through a day packed with meetings and phone calls is clearly loving it.
What makes Debbi run? What makes a woman totally commit her life to selling, as the company jargon goes, a warm and wonderful cookie in a feel-good way?
8:30 a.m: Fields, dressed in a teal-and-black jacket with a black ruffled skirt and spike heels, greets her visitors with her trademark huge smile and big hello. “This’ll be fun!” she says, quickly adding, “I don’t know that I’m that interesting.”
With that she gets to work. With her blond-tinted hair falling in soft curls around her shoulders, part of it caught up in a black bow, she furiously dials the push-button phone on her desk while her eyes focus on a two-inch stack of computer printout sales updates for the 500-plus red-and-white cookie stores in the United States, Japan, Hong Kong, Britain, Canada and Australia. Her right hand, when not dialing, is clutching a mug of decaf or jotting notes in her overstuffed day planner. She is a blur of motion.
“ I never thought I was pretty. The one thing that Randy does for me is he says something nice about me. It means so much in terms of my self-esteem because I really had no self-confidence whatsoever. What Randy has done is to make me feel special to him,” Fields says the following day.
The office reflects its occupant. The desk is carved oak, an antique. Nearby is an armoire in the same style, a personal computer, a white love seat and two matching chairs, two bouquets of fresh flowers, a large basket of dried flowers and a few bowls of candy that she guarantees will be gone by the end of the day. On the walls are framed photos and mementos and several portraits of her three daughters (Jessica, 8; Janessa, 6, and Jennifer, 3) and their artwork, also framed. A hand-stitched pillow with the company’s motto--”Good enough never is”--sits on the love seat.
“We’ve got some success stories here,” Fields says, continuing to tap out phone numbers while looking at the sales figures. The company’s new computer system (software designed by Randy, her husband, the chairman of the board and the chief financial officer), links her with all the stores and regional managers, calculates hourly sales goals and compares them with sales the same day a year ago. Her new phone system allows employees to relay urgent and not-so-urgent messages (about 100 per day) that she can tap into whenever she wants. “You can’t stop listening to people that work and support you,” she says. “I want the people in this organization to be happy.”
Fields’ phone conversations with her employees start out in personal territory and rapidly quickly segue into business.
“Hello, Mitch! Good morning! It’s your birthday? (She sings an off-key “Happy Birthday to You.”) You were No. 1 for yesterday! How’s Pat doing? Is everything OK from surgery? Good. Now, your one store is down 56%; that’s your new store. You’ve got to figure out how much you’re missing your sales target. You’ve got to find out the reason behind it. . . . Now, your new manager needs to come to work in a tie. He’s got a terrific personality and he’s very enthusiastic; give him six months and he’ll be great . . . . Now, what other little mountains can I move for you?”
In between calls, she jots notes for a speech she is to give that evening to a group of shopping-mall executives. “Can I get you anything?” she asks while making another call. “Is this boring? Are you bored?”
Her husband wanders into her office from his across the hall, stirring a glass of iced tea. “Do you want some?” he asks. “It’s instant and it’s yucky but you can have some.”
Randy and Debbi met in the Denver airport when she was 18 and contemplating a life as a ski bunny, and he was 28 and a successful financial consultant. Eventually, she says, she proposed and he declined, she gave him an ultimatum, he relented. As proud as she was of her husband’s success, there was nothing she could put her signature on.
Today he describes himself as “almost nerd-like” and admits he hates making decisions unless they are business-related.
“When I was in college,” he said, “I had 32 pairs of jeans and 32 blue work shirts. So I could go a whole month and only do laundry once and if I missed a day it would be OK. I’m habitual by nature. Debbi is totally spontaneous. By nature we are totally different, by preference we are almost identical. We both love food. And we both love our kids.”
“ When I was growing up I always thought I was special, and that was always very painful for me. Because it was always in my mind, but not neces s arily in anyone else’s. My parents--primarily my father--never said, ‘You do something uniquely well.’ It was always in the context of, ‘We love everybody equally.’ That drove me crazy. Even on his deathbed he said he loved me as much as all the others. “
10:45 a.m.: Fields dashes out of her office and walks upstairs to the mall’s main level to survey the scene at the Mrs. Fields store. “Oh, good, you’re sampling!” she tells the manager.
Sampling was her original road to success. With her borrowed bank loan, her husband’s skepticism and no support from her parents, 20-year-old Debbi, who had been baking for seven years, opened the first Mrs. Fields Chocolate Chippery (as it was called in those days) in Palo Alto in August, 1977. By noon, no one had bought a single cookie, she took a tray of them into the mall and gave them away. The return interest of those willing to go back into the store for paid seconds netted her a first-day sales of $75.
Today the company--which refuses to franchise but went public in May, 1986, and is listed on the London Stock Exchange--also owns La Petite Boulangerie, a chain of 125 bakery/cafes bought from Pepsico last April; Jessica’s Cookies and Famous Chocolate Chip Cookies, two cookie store chains located primarily on the East Coast; Janessa’s, a retail store for handmade gifts, one is in Park City, another to open soon in Santa Ana; and Jenny’s Swingset, selling children’s playwear, in Park City. The Westside Pavilion in West Los Angeles will soon add a Mrs. Fields Dessert Store for ice cream, cookies, cakes and pies.
11 a.m.: The test kitchen is in the basement of an adjacent building. The top two floors serve as classrooms for Cookie College, a new enterprise Fields started this year to bring managers to the main headquarters for a week of intensive training personal meetings. “I like to get to know them as people, not as numbers,” she says.
“Hi!” she says, making her way through the classrooms.
“Hi!” the students respond, their faces beaming.
“How are you doing?” she asks.
“Great!” comes the reply in unison. Another class applauds wildly as she walks through the room.
“They see her as a goddess,” Sally White, the director of marketing, would say later.
“ I think my father was absolutely, truly, genuinely pleased with what he accomplished in his life. It took me a long time to figure it out. The greatest gift I ever got was on the day of his funeral. My sisters pulled me aside and showed me that in his wallet he had kept pictures of all of us girls, a separate picture of his dog, and one of me. It was the greatest gift I could ever be given. “
Waiting for her in the red-and-white test kitchen is Martha Shepherd, who started with the company as director of training and development five years ago, and now works in developing recipes for new products. Shepherd was behind the new line of ice creams and today is at work on a cream cheese-based frosting for their banana-walnut muffins, an idea that arose from Fields’ habit of eating banana-nut bread with cream cheese.
“I know a lot about what Debbi wants now,” Shepherd says. “When it hits your taste buds it has to knock your socks off.”
Fields tastes the frosted muffins, chews thoughtfully, and pronounces the first one “too goopy,” and the flavor an ambivalent “Eh.”
“The flavors don’t go. I don’t know what it’s supposed to taste like, but how about banana cream pie?”
Between tastes Fields talks about the bad news she’s received about macadamia nuts this year from the company-owned processing plant in Hawaii. The plant buys 8% to 10% of the world’s macadamia nut crop for its products, and the bad news is that there’s a supply shortage.
“It’s an important nut to our customers,” Fields says.
“ My strength is my inability to compromise. If I really believe in something you’re not going to get me to budge. My weakness? I hate to lose. I’m highly competitive. And I don’t think I’m as patient as I need to be. That’s going to take another good 10 years years and more kids to get there. “
Noon: Lunch is upstairs in the company-owned experimental restaurant, Spike’s Grill, which takes up the top floor of the mall and serves hamburgers, chili, salads, chicken, steaks and rich desserts. The enormous commitment it requires has convinced Fields that she never wants to be in the restaurant business full-time.
Company headquarters are in the basement of the Main Street Mall, a complex they built to experiment with their retail-store ideas.
Lunching with Debbi and Randy are Doug Taylor and JuneAnn Oldham, two employees involved with the candy operation; the editor of the local paper who is doing a story on the new candy line; Sally White; and Erni Armstrong, Randy’s assistant.
The grand finale to the meal is a group tasting of five flavors of ice cream with the new Mrs. Fields caramel and dark chocolate toppings.
“You know,” says Randy, “I think people who don’t like chocolate are freaks. Freaks! “
“ There is a loss of free time now. Time becomes so precious. As exciting as it is, it’s also very scary because I see 10 years and it feels in some cases like yesterday. Having lunch with friends is a luxury. The one thing I refuse to give up is time with children. It’s family first, then business. And if there’s any time left over, it’s Debbi. “
2 p.m.: Fields tours the candy factory across the street, a complex still in the last stages of construction. Workmen are hurrying to finish it in time for a black-tie opening in two days. The factory satisfies Fields’ longstanding Willie Wonka fixation. Her husband, a confirmed chocaholic, loves the Rube Goldberg quality of the machinery, bought secondhand from an old Whitman’s chocolate factory.
The building, a restored boarding house, has three levels. The top floor serves as a dorm for Cookie College students; the street level houses an old-fashioned ice cream parlor and the basement holds the candy factory where visitors can watch the sweets being made from behind a wall of windows.
“I can’t believe it’s a reality!” Fields squeals as she walks through, her high heels skirting stray wiring and two-by-fours.
“ Sometimes I still want to throw in the towel. But there’s a passage in ‘The Prophet’ by Kahlil Gibran that says you can’t experience joy without experiencing sorrow. I always know that no matter how bad it is, there’s going to be an up point. Now I tend to go to people when I’m frustrated and say, ‘Help me, pull me through this one.’ “
3 p.m.: Fields is back at her office taste-testing cookies with Shepherd. She samples and rejects them all. There is no middle ground. It is either “perfect” or “disgusting.”
4 p.m.: She signs a batch of purchase orders (she yells “Yeaaaaaa!” whenever there’s a money-saving idea) and then leads a tour of the offices. Employees work in cubicles separated by mauve fabric-colored walls. Almost everyone has a computer and is introduced by Fields by their first names. Most are dressed casually.
She stops to chat with a new employee. “Are you going to be great ?” she asks. Then, in the same breath, she continues, “Are you looking for something beyond accounts payable?”
The woman looks momentarily startled by the question, before turning to her supervisor and asking, “Can I really say?”
4:30 p.m.: It’s upstairs to the cookie store to learn how to operate a new scale that weighs the cookies before they are sold (cookies and brownies are sold by the pound). While working the scale, Fields sells cookies to customers and truly appears to be in her element.
“Where are you from?” she asks two girls from Brigham Young University in Provo who tell her they admire her success. “What are you majoring in? International relations? Give us a call when you graduate!”
“Hi!” she says to another woman. “I like your sweater! Do you want anything to drink with this? Come back and see us! We get lonely!”
On a wall in the store, away from customers’ eyes, are guidelines for employees:
“Step 1: Recognize the Person. Good morning! It’s great to see you! You look (happy, tired, hurried). I like your jacket. . . . Step 2: Determine what they want. . . . Step 3: Tell them what a good choice they made. That’s my favorite! . . . Step 4: Tell them more you can do for them. Cold milk goes great with warm cookies . . . Step 5: Invite them back and leave them with a good feeling about our products. You are always so pleasant, you make my day!”
“ Am I the same person I was 10 years ago? I think it would be better to ask the people who have known me over that time. If there is a change, I think I’m a bit wiser when it comes to business because of the process and the hard knocks. If I were a betting person, I’d guess that others would say I haven’t changed, only that I’ve gotten busier and busier. “
5:30 p.m.: Fields goes through more phone messages in her office while her three girls mill about, asking for candy before dinner. Fields agrees after making them promise they will still eat later. “I want them to love their mother,” she says with a sigh. With her husband off to a meeting in Salt Lake City, she and the kids and their nanny go back up to Spike’s for dinner. There is only enough time to order, however, since Fields is due at Cookie College graduation ceremonies on the other side of the restaurant.
Jessica hesitates over choosing something on the menu. She is not hungry. Fields is not pleased.
“Jessica,” she says sternly, “I made a deal with you. This is not acceptable.”
Jessica nods, and asks for a private moment with her mother. The two wander off, exchange a few words and hug. The crisis is solved.
5:45 p.m.: At the graduation ceremony, Fields receives a raucous cheer and a standing ovation from her 35 graduates of the one-week course. “We want you to uphold the (values of the company),” she says. “Think of them as a torch, and never ever let it run low. It absolutely represents the standards you believe in.”
“This woman has unbelievable excitement!” says grad Bob Cummings, to more cheers. “I hope you learned one-tenth of what I did ‘cause I’m psyched to get out there and do the job!”
The graduation ends with entertainment provided by the students. They sing songs of praise for Fields and her company, and she wipes tears from her eyes.
Her parting words to the group: “If you ever need me, and as long as you never compromise , I will always be there for you.”
7:10 p.m.: Fields faces her final meeting of the day, a speaking engagement at the Stein Ericksen Lodge, a ski resort. To a group of 50 mall executives, she tells a 20-minute condensed version of her dough-to-riches story. “What I loved doing was eating chocolate-chip cookies. I even enjoyed eating the dough. And every time I shared them with people I could make them smile. And I thought, this is it. This is exactly what I wanted to do.” Her audience politely applauds.
8:30 p.m.: Debbi Fields heads home, chatting away about tomorrow’s schedule. Despite the pace of the day, her hair is intact, her clothes are unwrinkled. She is still smiling.
“ I don’t want to be remembered for how many cookie stores I had. I’d love to be associated with finding a cure for cystic fibrosis. “
