Mrs. Fields

Debbie Fields
By: John Reece
“Good enough never is.” – Debbie Fields
Debbie Fields is the founder, baker, chief cookie lover and former Chairman, of Mrs. Fields Cookies, a multi-million dollar company she founded in 1977. She has since sold her company, which is and has been a market leader among fresh-baked cookie stores. I chose Mrs. Fields as the subject of my case study because I feel I can relate to her. I ultimately want to open my own bakery and would love to take it to the top one day. Like Mrs. Fields I developed the love of baking at a young age and it has since been with me. Like her, I don’t have the money just laying around to do it with so I WILL have to do it from the ground up.
Debbi Fields was born on September 18, 1957 as Debra Jane Sivyer in Oakland, California. Debbi got the baking bug and a "taste" for entrepreneurship at the age of 13. As a kid she loved making cookies because she enjoyed the sense of satisfaction from family and friends. So when she got her first job at $5 per week, she used the income to buy 'real' ingredients used for baking her cookies - chocolate chips, butter and vanilla. She received inspiration from her father – a welder by trade – learning that happiness was found in enjoying what you do, family, and friends. At the age of nineteen, she married Randy Fields, giving her the name she would eventually use for her company and that we are all familiar with today. Debbie and Randy had five daughters, Jessica, Jenessa, Jennifer, Ashley, and McKenzie. She and Randy divorced in 1997. The following year, she married Michael Rose , former Holiday Inn president and CEO and added 5 stepdaughters from Rose’s former marriage. They currently reside in Memphis, TN and she has since published two cookbooks, “100 Recipes from the Kitchen of Debbie Fields” and “I Love Chocolate.” The first one sold 1.8 million copies and was the first cookbook to make it to the New York Times best seller list. She currently sits on the boards of... [continues]

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