ET: My name is Eshika Tiwari, and I’m here with Sania Nadkarni. Today we will be interviewing Antoine Tang, a business owner who has a passion for cooking and baking cookies. Tang started his business 11 years ago, and now has two growing businesses in San Mateo and Palo Alto, as well as a film production kitchen in Campbell.
SN: Now let’s get into how he started his journey in the cookie business. Where do you get your passion for baking?
AT: I’ve always loved cookies ever since I was a kid, and I love Mrs. Fields cookies. But I grew up in a working class family. We didn’t have a lot of money, so we just knew not to ask for things. So I remember when I was a kid, like at the mall with my family, when we would walk by the Mrs. Fields cookies, I would not look at it, because I didn’t want to show that I desired it. I’m Vietnamese so there’s a saying, “Don’t want things too much because you can’t have it” because I showed my parents I wanted it. It’s dumb to do that because they can’t buy it for me. And because we grew up you know, we didn’t have a lot, I always knew what food was in the refrigerator, growing up. Always. If you asked me at 10 years old, “What’s in your fridge?” I can tell you there’s eight eggs in the fridge right now. I knew the inventory of our fridge, because we just didn’t have a lot of food. When I made food, I made sure to not mess it up. I’m very good at not messing up food that I cook. And I remember when I went to my friend’s house, they had an abundance of food. Now that was really cool that they had that, and I remember making cookies at their house because they had all the ingredients.
ET: When did you first think of the idea of opening a cookie shop?
AT: I later started baking cookies just for myself. This is 2013. I started baking just for me because I love cookies, and I couldn’t find a cookie place that was open at 9 in the night. Now you could even go on like DoorDash and order cookies from like five different place probably send it to you, but this is like 11 years ago DoorDash actually didn’t exist. And so I started I think it’s just me developing this and I made this batch and it was okay once it like amazing or anything but it satisfied my desire for a warm cookie and then I shared with my small group, I shared with my coworkers because I made so many, and then they told me that i should sell them, and then I started selling them online and then slowly it got very busy and it grew a lot and needed people to start working in the kitchen And then after that I was so busy so I didn’t really I don’t really have a plan to open a cookie shop. I kind of went like what was the demand and the business lead me in the direction of growth. I will say this about owning a business: When I first started my business, I had a very big opinion about cookies. Just a personal thing. And I’m lucky that I was on the right track because people bought it. And then after a while I listened to what my customers wanted. So I’ve been operating for 11 years now. I noticed that every year my opinion matters less because I have something that’s stronger than my opinion which is my data of what people want.
SN: Before you decided to go into the cookie business, what was your original plan, like what did you want to do with your life?
AT: Being in Silicon Valley, I really coveted the office stuff, like the badge, going into work and badging in and I thought that would be great, because people who do that seem important. So I saw that and I was like I would love to have one of those. So I worked in sales, a lot of sales jobs. Those were not my thing. But then I just stumbled onto cookies. Someone said there’s two great adventures in life. One is finding out what you’re meant to do, and the other is doing it. And I’m very lucky that I got to find out what I was meant to do and I got to do it. I think some people never get to do what they want to do.
SN: When you first went into the cookie business it was uncharted territory for you. Were there any initial fears or things that you were scared about that you just pushed through because you knew this was what you meant to do?
AT: Yeah, that’s, like 11 years ago. The problem wasn’t around then and many other cookie places weren’t around then, and there’s only two other cookie places that I knew about very slowly. OK, so the first year I’m just doing I’m just doing what I can and I’m not really concerned about the risks because it’s so small. But then when I opened my cookie shop, I figured that’s a bigger investment. So then the fear is anybody going to actually show up, is anybody going to actually come to the cookie business in this spot in downtown San Mateo where it was at. And I didn’t have any peers that I could talk to about it. So there was this guy named Anthony in the city, unfortunate because his name is similar to mine. I’m Antoine and his name is Anthony we both make cookies so people often get us mixed up and one time he got really upset he actually came to my shop and confronted me about it. And when he came to my shop, I thought we should be buddies like ‘Hey, we’re both in the cookie game, let’s chat.’ But it was very confrontational. Oh my god, man, that sucks. Now actually, I have a lot of other cookie buddies because they reach out to me on Instagram, so now I have some friends and peers. That’s nice. I’m the one that’s the most experienced, so they ask me for a lot of advice, which I’m happy.
ET: You said there’s a lot of cookie businesses that you know. What do you think sets your business apart from other cookie businesses?
AT: I don’t think there’s been many other businesses that are as efficient in their process as we are. So if you’re a customer, and tomorrow you want five hundred cookies, you can call us and we can do it. We just have to bake an extra two hours. There was one order for a hospital that was 2500 cookies, and we were able to do that in one day. So we have a very organized process of production that can produce what the customer wants and we could produce it at a level of quality that’s also very good.
ET: Do you have any advice for high schoolers that would like to start a business?
AT: I would say work in jobs to see what you like to do or study different things to see what you like. I don’t know if starting a business at too young of an age is a good idea, because you don’t know how to actually manage your energy at a young age. It takes the ability to manage your energy at a high level. I would say at a young age, work for somebody else really hard, and build up your endurance and learn how to understand this business really well. And then learn what you’re good at and learn what your calling is — hopefully you know what your calling is.
SN: And those are all the questions we have today. Thank you Antoine from Antoine’s Cookie Shop for joining us today and sharing his experiences starting and running this business!
Music by Pumpupthemind
