Exploring a Cookie Business

In a nutshell, there are three (3) inter-related aspects to consider:

• Legal - Involves registering your company’s name, applying for a business license or permit, deciding on a structure for your business (sole proprietor, partnership, LLC ¹, or corporation), reporting to the IRS².

• Financial - Concerns with your written business plan, available sources of capital, your understanding of basic accounting.

• Marketing - A business is not a business until it has a customer. The quality of your products plays a major role in getting and keeping customers.

Therefore, the best reasons to start any small business are passion and exceptional product quality. Those are precisely the fundamental principles of Bella’s Cookies.

Kelly bakes these gigantic cookies (5" in diameter) under the most sanitary condition in the family-owned production facilities. She uses 100% natural, organic ingredients. Fresh eggs come directly from a local farmer who raises Rhode Island hens. Mark makes organic sugar from cane juice. Their two little children, Bella and Liam, are reliable cookie testers.

Bella’s Cookies is a true family small business. It was built on Kelly’s passion for baking, and Mark’s belief in delivering the best quality products.

In Smart Cookies #012, I mentioned a few do’s and don’ts about starting a homemade cookie business.

When Mark and Kelly needed capital for their cookie business, I'm sure that they considered approaching a financial institution. Let's imagine living in a developing country and being very poor, how can we finance our start-up business?

Thanks to the advance of technology, a great answer is now on the World Wide Web.

Through Kiva, you and I can make a loan of as little as US$25.00 to an aspiring entrepreneur in a developing country. This is not charity, but a business loan.

As Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times wrote, "You, too, can be a banker to the poor."