When she finished high school, Laura Delfino (40) decided to study gastronomy. For years she worked in restaurants, and at a certain point in her life she decided to change her business: 12 years ago he had his own event organization company, and about three years ago he faced the biggest crisis of his career because, from one day to the next, events stopped happening.
So, in a context of as much uncertainty as was that of 2020, Delfino’s company was left without a job. And the need to generate income to be able to live in peace, the I have to return to their roots and resume gastronomy.
The event organizer began to make breakfasts to order, first to close people and, when he saw that the proposal was liked, He decided to open an Instagram account for his business to reach more and more people. This is how Cookies & Más emerged in mid-2020.
The first thing was to position itself through the sale of boxes of breakfasts, and the second —which arises from a need to make the first thing work— was the development of a niche market: frozen breakfast products. “After some time it was working (the venture) I started freezing puddings, brownies, nut breads, etc. to make it easier to assemble breakfasts; I couldn’t make a pudding every time they asked me for breakfast because everything that didn’t go in the box was at a loss,” Delfino explained in an interview with Coffee & Business.
Also in the frozen business He began to market a product that he made for his children, “cookie rolls”: “As if it were a sausage but made of cookie dough, you have it in the freezer,” explained the entrepreneur. To turn them into cookies, there is nothing left but cut them up, and put the pieces in the oven for eight minutes.
Courtesy Cookies & More
Cookie rolls from Cookies & More
“They had a starting pile. People were taken with the product because it was new on the marketDelfin said.
For the success of this particular product, a friend suggested that she appear on the Sembrando program. Although the entrepreneur confessed that at that time she already thought she was not going to be able to run her two businesses —Cookies & Más and Komma—, once normal life resumed, since that had not yet happened, she decided to find out. What was it like to enter this program?
Then, Delfino faced a kind of ultimatum to define if he wanted to bet on the professionalization of this venture: To enter the program, he had to present his product in 10 days, and professionally because Grupo Disco was going to see it. He decided to invest in the correct development of the product so that it would have a good enough presentation for commercialization in supermarkets, and he succeeded. In 10 days he came to present the cookie rolls in a box ready for sale.
Courtesy Cookies & More
Vanilla Cookie Rolls with Chocolate Chips from Cookies & More
Grupo Disco became interested in “cookie rolls”, the problem is that until then the production was in the kitchen of Delfino’s house and to be sold through supermarkets “I had to have a plant enabled, and a lot of other things that I didn’t have”as he recalled in the interview.
Together with her husband, they again bet on Cookies & Más, for which they hired a management company and, in a space of approximately 30 square meters, they carried out all the conditioning so that Finally, bromatology gave the authorization for the production and commercialization of the products. This is how they began their sales of “cookie rolls” in three different flavors —vanilla with chocolate chips, vanilla with dragees and chocolate—, in Grupo Disco supermarkets that have an agreement with Sembrando.
Asked about the sale price of “cookie rolls” in supermarkets, Delfino said that it is $269 per box, and that the value is determined by Grupo Disco: “Sembrando does not intervene in any type of negotiation, neither prices nor quantities,” he explained.
According to Delfino, sales in supermarkets are good, although they depend on the demand in each branch. In the interview he highlighted the Disco de Punta Carretas as one of the supermarkets where “a lot is sold”.
Towards the future
In the midst of working with Sembrando and Grupo Disco, Delfino enrolled in a six-month mentorship at the University of Montevideo that opened new doors for her because, after finishing the mentorship, Those in charge suggested that he apply to the seed capital of the National Development Agency (ANDE).
It took him about four months to make the presentation of what the venture was: where he was going, where he was going to invest the capital if he won it and much more. He finally presented it in September of last year, and in October he had the approval of the agency. In January he signed this new agreement.
Asked about what she is going to do with the capital, Delfino pointed out that The main plan is to make themselves known, so they hired a communication agency that is being dedicated to the Cookies & Más social networks. They are also going to invest in new products to continue conditioning the plant: a new blast chiller and air conditioning, among others.
Lastly, the entrepreneur stated that in entrepreneurship They are committed to continuing to grow in other supermarkets, so that the product can reach more homes. “More than anything with the cookie rolls that are homemade products, and have no preservatives of any kind”.
The breakfasts continue
Delfino assured that in addition to being in supermarkets, Cookies & Más maintains direct sales to the public both in breakfasts and in other ready-to-eat products and also in frozen products. “Customers can come to the plant to buy the products, but they can’t eat here,” he said.
Furthermore, he said that the frozen ones are also for sale in OrdersYa.
Regarding her direct work with clients and her work with Grupo Disco, the entrepreneur maintained that they are two different business units, although “It may be that thanks to the proposal in Grupo Disco, the frozen business has grown in the venture: puddings, brownies, cookies, etc.”
