Can You Bake?

Opportunity Summary

The Beginning
Ellie & Ollie: Cookies For Dinner was founded by Mary Beth Schad in Dallas, Texas in 2006 when a friend casually commented, "I would buy these cookies. " Previously, Mary Beth had been a 4th grade school teacher and wanted to continue staying home with her young children Eloise & Oliver. This was all the inspiration she needed to avoid having to go back to work.

That weekend Mary Beth and her husband Jim went out looking for suitable packaging. After some tweaking they came up with a prototype box and labels printed on the computer for their debut to the world. Luckily, the cookies were good enough to compensate for the poor packaging and Mary Beth's friend ordered more cookies for the following week.

The cookies caught on quickly and the recipients were always excited to see the Ellie & Ollie boxes arriving. Over the next few months they refined the packaging, recipes and website and had it all trademarked as they could tell this project was starting to take on a life of its own.

The Turning Point
Some months later another friend told them about a contest in Martha Stewart’s magazine that was featuring women who had taken a passion and turned it into a business. Mary Beth entered the contest and the deadline came and went without a word. Then the following month she received a call saying that Ellie & Ollie had been selected as a finalist and would be featured in the magazine and flown to New York for the live taping of the show!

That event really gave the young company some credibility and the local news picked up on it. Ellie & Ollie was featured in several magazines and newspapers and Mary Beth even made the cover of one of them! The orders started flowing in from people and places they had never heard of.

Things were really starting to change.

What To Do Next?
Keep in mind this was all being done out of their home kitchen and this sudden growth had created opportunities as well as obstacles. Mary Beth and Jim were uncertain if they should rent out a commercial kitchen, build out a retail location or look into other avenues. At one point they met with a niche grocery chain and an upscale department store, but it just didn't feel quite right.

The Aha! Moment
Simultaneously, two phenomenon started occurring. Requests were coming in asking if franchises were available and friends saw how successful this venture was becoming and asked how they could do it or if Mary Beth needed help.
Ellie & Ollie had been struggling with how to deliver fresh products to distant customers while minimizing the costly shipping charges. Mary Beth & Jim wanted to grow the company without turning it into a baking factory; they wanted the cookies to retain their freshness, uniquely delicious taste and quality.
Everything was coming to a head.

Aha! "We could bring on baking affiliates or partners that live elsewhere and have them bake the cookies!" They thought this would be a perfect opportunity for other stay at home parents, part time workers or someone simply wanting to earn a few extra dollars. Realizing that many other companies such as The Pampered Chef, Mary Kay and Arbonne had successfully expanded via affiliates the idea seemed to have legs.

However, there was an aspect of these business models Mary Beth and Jim didn't like. They were all Multi Level Marketing companies or MLM for short. If you are not familiar with the structure it basically predicates that you host shows and sell products to your guests and then ask them to join the organization. You receive a commission for sales and signing people up as well as commissions on all those below you in your "downline." Ellie & Ollie chose to pursue a different route.

Licensing
Franchises are very expensive and highly regulated and MLM is often more about soliciting your friends to join. Licensing is right in the middle. It is more flexible than franchising, as the Licensor doesn't dictate every aspect of the business. The candidate usually pays a buy-in fee to become an authorized agent or licensee for the parent company. They then pay an ongoing fee to maintain this status. The licensee will sign a License Agreement and NDA or (non disclosure agreement). These help protect Ellie & Ollie's proprietary information as well as insure that guidelines our customers have come to expect are followed.

For this fee Ellie & Ollie will provide:

Non exclusive rights to leverage our trademarked brand that has been proven in the marketplace and recognized by national media outlets and customers worldwide.
Packaging materials to assemble 100 of our signature brown boxes worth $2000 retail! This includes boxes, logos, ribbon, glues, stuffing and cookie sleeves.
Use of our copywrited recipes and proprietary information required to reproduce our delicious cookies at your location.
100 Ellie & Ollie business cards .
100 Glossy 5x7 promotional cards for displays and handing out.
Proven marketing methods for the best ways to promote our cookies. Learn from our mistakes on what works! We have several strategies to generate weekly, repeat business year round.
Future access to a private chat board of other licensees to exchange ideas and discuss what is working for them and what isn't.
Replenish your supplies and marketing materials at discounted rates due to our bulk buying power.
Guidance on setting up bank accounts and merchant accounts so you can accept credit cards.
Continuous customer support for any questions or issues you may have.
Most franchises charge between $20,000 to $35,000 just for the franchise fee. Then there are typically $250,000 or more in expenses to build out the location, advertising, deposits and so on. You often have to have a liquid net worth of several hundred thousand dollars to even be considered. This discourages and rules out many candidates.

We at Ellie & Ollie want you to succeed and don't want to break your bank before you even get started. We want you to do well because it is our brand you are promoting and your friends you are selling to. We want a win/win relationship where we both walk away happy.

For legal reasons we cannot disclose potential sales figures as that may be misleading if you fail to attain those same levels. So, we won't say you will make this much or sell this many boxes per day because there is no way for us to know that answer. However, I will say some days we made zero boxes and some days we made a few and some days we made over 100. Some orders are for 1 box and some are for 300. They retail for $20 each so you can do the math to determine how much you can potentially make. Of that amount the profit margins are usually betweenRespond to this opportunity% depending on the cookie or other variables. So in short, most of the money you make stays in your pocket!

Now, figure out what you might earn doing something else in the same amount of time and it is easy to see how lucrative this can be. If you earned $10/hour x 40 hours that equals $400/week. You have the potential to make the same amount of money by selling approximately 25 boxes of cookies at $20 each. We can show you one easy method to get one customer to order this many and more from you each week all year long. So, potentially if you get one customer like we suggest you can replace that $10/hr job. Oh, and you can bake those 25 boxes of cookies in a few hours whenever you want.

So What's the Cost?

Only $499!

Limited, one time licensing, supplies and setup fee*. Our standard licensing fee is $1500. This is an introductory, discounted offer to early participants. (*full details in licensing agreement)

Choose one plan below to maintain your licensee status

Level 1 (Good)

$50/month, 12-month minimum with monthly bank draft.

Level 2 (Better)

$40/month, 12-month minimum with prepay.
This is a 20% savings over Level 1 or the equivalent of receiving more than 2 months for FREE!

Level 3 (Best)

$30/month, 24-month minimum with prepay.
This is a 40% savings over Level 1 or the equivalent of receiving almost 10 months for FREE!

So for less than $500 you can be in business for yourself, working at your own pace and earning more than you might at another job for the time you put in. This isn't complicated and there aren't any tricks. Everyone loves cookies in a pretty box!