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Larry Krasnoff Interview
(Cornerstone Cookie Co.)
Larry Krasnoff and his wife Leigh started out in the Atlanta area as a
specialty cake delivery company. Business was so good they decided to expand
into brownies and cookies.
And today business is better than ever!!
Larry Krasnoff walks us through his success story.
Q – Larry, what differentiates your co. from
all of the other cos. out there?
A – We’re online and on phone sales, a gift co. We specialize
in cookies and brownies, nuts, cheese straws and coffee and things of that
nature. Mainly people who want to order send out Gifts Express. We wrap
up our gifts and send them out all across the country.
Q – Larry, what’s your background? How’d
you get the idea to launch this co?
A – My wife and I are not school trained. We trained on our own.
We’re actually in our 10 th year (2007) at the moment. We’re
celebrating our ten year anniversary right now. We decided that we wanted
to start something on our own in the gift business to ship across the country.
We both like to cook and we really never baked in the past but, we just
decided to go for it. What can we do that corporations will order and that’s
what we went for. We went for this type of business. We thought of gift
baskets cos. or cookie cos. but, we decided just to go with this. And, we’ve
just been increasing our line ever since.
Q – You bake all of your goods from scratch?
A – Yes. Exactly. From Scratch. In the beginning we started with
just two things, but slowly but surely it has gone to ten, eleven, twelve
different types of cookies. We have eight different types of cakes which
are only for the Atlanta area. Then, we do coffee. And nuts and so on.
Q – You make the coffee from scratch too?
A – No. That we do from private labeling.
Q – Do you have an actual store?
A – We don’t have a bricks and mortar type of store. We do
have a warehouse location that we do all of our baking, and putting together
of our gifts and our shipping goes out of as well. Actually, we do 40-45%
of our business in the month of December.
Q – What do you sell the most of?
A – Oh, cookies and brownies by far.
Q – You ship just in the U.S?
A – All across the United States including Alaska and Hawaii. We
have gone to Mexico a little bit. And, we do ship to Canada. But, not in
Europe, or anywhere else.
Q – Would you think that would change anytime
soon?
A – Probably not. Our product does not have any preservatives in
it. It’s all fresh product. To go across the seas, it takes awhile
and second of all customs will hold you up. We don’t feel our product
is going to have that much of a shelf life to make it that far.
Q – Where would you like to take the co?
A – Oh, my gosh, just be bigger at what we are right now. Just keep
on offering more products, more packaging styles. People always want new
packaging styles. People want new boxes, new gift wrapping, new tins if
we use tins. Pretty much they like what we have product-wise, but they always
want new packaging.
© Gary James All Rights Reserved
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