By Jill Fox
Owning her own business wasn’t always the plan for Amanda Fletcher, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles.
Growing up, her mother always gave out decorated cookies as gifts, and Amanda wanted to be able to do the same for her children.
After moving to Coral Springs in 2009 for graduate school, she met her husband, Chris, and decided on Parkland Isles to raise their family. Having grown up in Parkland, Chris graduated from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2005, and his mother is still a registrar at the school.
Amanda worked as an athletic trainer until her son was born. Now she and Chris have two children—Cole, 5, and Hunter, 2, and she loves making them cookies.
In April 2019, Amanda “dough”nated some of her decorated cookies for a cakewalk at her church, First Church Coral Springs. After posting a picture of them on social media, someone reached out and asked to order cookies for an event.
“It was not meant to be a business,” said Amanda, “I never thought I would be selling my cookies.” But she started taking orders.
Soon after, Chris was diagnosed with Stage 4 Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and out of commission for six months. Amanda put her cookie sales on hold until he was in remission.
Then COVID hit.
“I wasn’t sure if I should try to sell cookies when restaurants weren’t even open,” said Amanda. But she decided to give it a shot, starting with some Easter DIY kits, and sales went well.
After posting a picture of graduation cookies in a Parkland Adopt a Senior Facebook group, it led to 1,000 in cookie sales.
“I thought maybe I would get five or ten orders,” said Amanda, “Never in my life did I think I would sell a thousand cookies in a month from one post in a Facebook group.”
Now, between repeat customers and word of mouth, Amanda has a steady business making holiday cookies, DIY kits, and cookies for practically any occasion.
“Since then, I haven’t gone a day without touching a cookie in some form,” she said.
In fact, she’s not taking any new orders until after Election Day due to baking dozens of campaign cookies in addition to her regular and Halloween orders. She had orders from candidate Simeon Brier and is working on others for candidate Derek Olivier.
“Derek’s wife tried to order 1,000 cookies, but I may only get to a few hundred,” said Amanda.
It’s not like she has all day. Amanda’s two young children keep her very busy — she is homeschooling one of them.
“I get up at 5 a.m. to bake cookies, and then I do more after they go to bed,” she said, “It’s out of control.”
As far as the future, Amanda said she could continue to work out of her home unless she makes $50,000 a year, and that would be a lot of dough. Right now, she wants to stay a cottage food business and operate out of her house.
“I hope to be able to take on more when my kids are in school full-time,” she said.
Follow Amanda on Instagram or Facebook to see what’s in store for Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, and Christmas. Her average cookie price is $2.75 to $3 and depends on sizing and detail.
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