Gladder's Gourmet Cookies From Broom Closet to Booming Bakery By Nancy Ross Ryan

John Glader (not "Gladder," as many people think) holds a commercial pilot certificate and flight instructor rating, and was a corporate private pilot for four years. And he owes it all to cookie dough, which paid for flight school. Glader, proprietor of Gladder's Gourmet Cookies in Lockhart, Texas, has no formal baking training: He learned while operating three Austin, Texas sandwich and ice cream shops during the early eighties. "I call them my learning curve," he says. And that's where he first started making cookies, all according to his own formulas. The cookies were so good and the quality so high, that commercial customers started coming one by one to buy the dough from him in bulk. By 1986, he had closed all three shops and, to keep up with demand for his dough, he rented a seventy-square-foot broom closet in a cold storage facility. He brought the mini-space up to health inspection code, installed used equipment he had purchased at auction, and made cookie dough in the remaining ten square feet. When customers pulled up in front of the 100,000-square-foot storage facility to pick up orders, he never told them that his operation only commanded 70 of those feet. His dough business was so successful that Glader could finally finance his first love: flying. When he wasn't working on his pilot skills or making cookie dough, he was logging in hours at the library, reading how-to business books, baking magazines and food industry publications. By 1989, his operation had outgrown its space, and he moved to a 2,500 square-foot facility. And, now flight-certified, he started piloting corporate executives around the country. "It was a tremendous motivator to listen to executives talking about their businesses, working hard, enjoying their work. I realized then that flying, by itself, wasn't going to give me that kind of (executive) life of financial security. That's why I never backed off cookie dough." Instead, in 1993, he backed off of flying and his cookie business really took off. Using equipment from another industry, Glader designed a mold plate and developed his own unique (now patented) system for forming and stacking cookie dough. This automation enabled him to offer lower prices for his high-quality products. In June of 1994, Gladder's Gourmet Cookies moved to its current location in Lockhart. He now makes tons of cookie dough each year, and has a lot more time to fly his own planes. To talk to John and Susan Glader directly, call them at (512) 398-GLAD (4523).

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Gladder's Gourmet Cookies

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