SHARON, Pa. – A year after opening downtown, Allie’s Sweet Tooth is preparing to bite into its next phase.
With assistance from Penn-Northwest Development Corp., Shenango Valley Enterprise Zone Corp., the city of Sharon and Sharon Community Development Corp., entrepreneur Allie Adams, founder of Allie’s Sweet Tooth, is preparing to launch Allie’s Cookie Table, a line for larger distribution of the company’s specialty cookies.
Adams is investing $650,000 in the expansion, which will include an estimated $350,000 in new equipment to increase manufacturing capabilities.
“We are known for our custom cookies and our specialty cookies,” Adams said. “There’s a need for specialty cookies in the distribution market, so because of our specialty and because of our expertise in that area, we are moving into production and supplying distributors.”
Adams officially launched Allie’s Sweet Tooth in 2009. The business got its start when her then 2-year-old daughter, Kailyn, wanted a princess party with her preschool friends. A single mother of two, she taught herself at night for a week how to make what she wanted for the party.
“She told me today, ‘I’m the reason you did all this,’” she said, laughing. She found she enjoyed baking and “went from making the most horrible hearts and star cookies ever straight into making Super Mario Bros. for my friends’ parties and cousins’ parties.”
Her father helped her build an audience online and developed her website, which led to her being contacted by celebrities, local news outlets and Fortune 500 companies that wanted her to start doing cookies for their clients and employees.
Originally based in Cleveland, Adams relocated to Pennsylvania in 2013 when she remarried. “I knew I could bake anywhere and move my business and keep my corporate clients, but rebuild a local business once we moved,” she said. She opened in Grove City before adding a second store in Mercer, but she closed the Grove City store and expanded in Mercer before running out of space.
That led to opening in the old Army-Navy building downtown, supported by a $25,000 grant from the city’s American Rescue Plan allocation. The space features a bakery, dining area, event space and corporate packaging area.
“We ran Mercer and Sharon for a while consecutively, but with this new opportunity, we decided to just stay in one headquarters and consolidate everything into one space and focus on this new endeavor,” she said. “When this opportunity presented itself, when we were approached by multiple different distributors, we knew the space was perfect for it because we can move into three floors.”
The project will involve moving the service counters on the ground floor to take advantage of the 7,000-square-foot space and moving equipment upstairs to expand decorated cookie production, she said. She ordered four pieces of new equipment, some of which she helped design. One piece is being assembled in Italy.
“We have multiple equipment manufacturers involved in this process, and I had to become somewhat of an engineer and figure all the stuff out that I’ve never thought about before, which has been really amazing and exhausting at the same time,” she said.
“I don’t want them to look like every mass-produced cookie on the market,” she added.
Penn-Northwest and Shenango Valley Enterprise Zone are providing $282,400 in financing. Representatives of both organizations met with Adams and recognized there was a market for what she was selling, particularly because of the closing of a cookie plant in the Wheatland-Farrell area, said Rod Wilt, Penn-Northwest executive director.
“That left a void in the market,” he said. “Some of the larger food brokers were looking for a local supplier of some of these pinwheel cookies and some of the other ones that Allie makes that she could scale up on.”
Adams subsequently secured contracts with members of the local food broker community, with enough lead time to source the equipment she needed to take on the commercial business and put together a business plan.
“When you sit down and meet with Allie and talk to her, she’s got a ton of experience. She’s very confident in her ability to take on this new line of work on the commercial side,” Wilt said. “We really believe in her. We think she’s the right person to do this.”
Allie’s Cookie Table will sell bulk cookies by the case for distribution, but also offer them pre-packaged with labels, which retail outlets prefer, Adams said.
“We also work with lots of different wedding venues to offer specialty cookies to their brides and for their events,” business that also is expected to expand, she said. Demand for her products has already increased exponentially.
She also expects to expand her workforce this year, from eight employees now – plus interns from Laurel Technical Institute – to up to 25.
Current and past clients include Cleveland Browns Alumni Association, Nascar, Major League Baseball and Gene Simmons, bassist and co-lead singer for the rock band Kiss. “The Kentucky Derby was my favorite – my kids’ favorite too – because we got to deliver them,” she recalled.
Pictured at top: Kailyn Adams and Allie Adams.