Episode 31 – The Recipe for Giving

Lisa Graham (00:00):
Hi, my name is Lisa Graham, and I’m excited to welcome you to today’s episode of Change the Rules. I have my co-host Dan Graham with me, and today we have co-founders of Tiff’s Treats, Tiffany and Leon Chen in the studio. Hey guys, so glad y’all are here. So if you haven’t heard of Tiff’s Treats, it’s probably because you have not been lucky enough to taste their amazing deliciousness, but what they do is they hand deliver cookies to your door and they really are an amazing product. So we’re really excited to hear your story today. And we’re excited to talk to you about your founding story and how your business gives back to the community. So let’s start with that. How did you guys found Tiff’s Treats? And to give a background as well, you notice they have the same last name, so they are married. So your marriage has made it through the founding of a business. So we’d love to hear how you guys got started.
Leon Chen (00:44):
Absolutely. Well it got started because this one over here, my now wife, then girlfriend stood me up on a date. And so she felt bad. I’ll let you tell the story since you did the standing up.
Tiffany Chen (00:58):
Yeah. So this is a long time ago now. So this was back in 1999. We were sophomores at UT at the time. And we were on winter break, stood Leon up on a date and didn’t call them to say I was going to miss it or be late. And so when I got back home, my mom told me I should apologize. So I decided to bake some cookies. That was my thing. And so I baked some cookies, drove them over to his house, said I was sorry, he was good. But he was stunned by the warm cookies. And we only recently found out, I found out like three months ago, he had never had warm cookies up until that moment. So that was new information for me.
Leon Chen (01:31):
Yeah, I thought that was a rare thing, but apparently everybody had warm cookies growing up but me.
Tiffany Chen (01:36):
So he was like, well, it’s the best thing I’ve ever had. And he said, well, when we get back to college. In a couple of weeks after winter break is over, we should start this as a business. We can do it as delivery. It’ll be just like pizza delivery, but with cookies. So, you know, we decided we were gonna bake and deliver warm cookies and deliver them to student.
Lisa Graham (01:55):
Were you being serious or was that like a pickup line?
Leon Chen (01:57):
No, definitely not a pickup line, I’m not that smooth. I was being dead serious. I had interned at a place my freshman and sophomore years, and I remember sitting there at the internship, it was this office place in Dallas, and I remember watching everyone in the office and they were just watching the clock tick down 4:45, 4:50, 5 o’clock was like, they won the lottery and it was just sad for me. I was like, thinking, is this going to be, I’m going to graduate college and get a career like them and be miserable. And so I was just kinda at that point, thinking of something else to do.
Tiffany Chen (02:29):
He was always looking for something to do. I can’t remember. There was toxic margarita machine rentals. That’s some stupid, some sort of vending machine we had. There was lots of ideas churning through. So I accidentally stumbled into the midst of one of these ideas.
Leon Chen (02:43):
Yeah. And she said no, right away. So what’s really funny and what’s really cool is that I was okay with it. It was again, one of my stupid ideas and we could have just gone the rest of our lives, whatever, however, that would have ended up without doing this business. But what was weird, she called me back a few hours later and was like, you know what, I’m looking at this, you were at the grocery store, right?
Tiffany Chen (03:06):
Yeah, I went to the grocery store just to find out, because when you make cookies like this for home, you don’t even have a concept of what it would even cost to make. And what other kinds of ingredients, you know, you sort of, yeah. I made the things I made. And so we went up there to find out how much does it cost to make what kind of stuff besides chocolate chip, what else could we even have on the menu? Basic stuff like that. And then it started getting exciting and fun.
Leon Chen (03:27):
Yeah. So she called back and said, let’s give it a try. I’ll only do this Sunday through Thursday because I want to go out Friday and Saturday with my friends. I’m in college.
Tiffany Chen (03:36):
Check, check: went out every Friday and Saturday my entire college career.
Leon Chen (03:39):
Only 8:00 PM to midnight because we were college students at the time. So we didn’t, she didn’t want to quit school to do this venture quite yet. So those were her stipulations, I guess.
Tiffany Chen (03:51):
So then so we had sort of the basics figured out, we figured out how we would package them, you know, what kinds we would make. We printed up flyers. And then we went back to school about two weeks later. And we just did it out of Leon’s college apartment. So straight from there, we flyered all the dorms and everything.
Dan Graham (04:08):
With permit and everything I’m assuming?
Lisa Graham (04:10):
We had roommates that we didn’t tell we were gonna do this. So we were the first people back. We were always the last to leave for breaks and the first to get back. And so we were in there a couple of days, I guess, then they got back and that’s when we told them.
Leon Chen (04:23):
And at the time it was completely illegal to do a food-based business from your home in Austin. And we didn’t know it, but it didn’t stop us. So it was, it was nice to be naive, young, and frankly stupid when we started the business. And yeah, we did it out of the apartment. As small as any business could start, maybe five orders a night, it was mostly us playing video games, watching movies and studying, hanging out with our roommates, but things just kind of got busier and busier and the students started ordering more. We started as a late night student concept, which isn’t really what our bread and butter is these days. But that’s kind of all we knew when we were in college. So that was our target at first.
Dan Graham (05:03):
Tiffany, what video games did you play?
Tiffany Chen (05:05):
I don’t play video games and I also detest watching people play video games such as Leon, but I would be puttering around.
Dan Graham (05:14):
So when he says, “We stayed up late playing video games.” he means…
Tiffany Chen (05:18):
He means his roommates.
Leon Chen (05:18):
In between orders. So then there’d be an order. I’d be like, okay, put it on the video.
Tiffany Chen (05:21):
But honestly that didn’t last all that long because you don’t have to be very busy with a delivery business and only two people running it to feel busy because one person’s on the road and the other person’s back, they’re taking calls and making other orders. So there, you know, outside of those first couple months there wasn’t really after that there’s been no downtime. Even if we weren’t making any money, there was still no downtime after that.
Dan Graham (05:43):
Tiff’s Treats instead of Tiffany’s Treats?
Tiffany Chen (05:45):
Oh, good question. Yeah, it was Tiffany’s Treats. So when we started, it was Tiffany’s Treats.
Leon Chen (05:52):
A big conglomerate jewelry company (I won’t mention the name) that had a similar, if not exact name as Tiffany’s Treats threatened to sue us if we didn’t change our name. And so we thought at that point we were so big.
Tiffany Chen (06:04):
This was in 2003. So we had been doing it for four years, I guess, maybe three and a half. And yeah, we got a letter saying, you need to change your name. And to us at the moment, we were like, Oh, no way. We’re already so big. Everybody knows us. There’s no way we could ever change our name. It was, we were just like, there was no way, there’s no possible way. So we spent a lot of money we didn’t have on legal fees trying to defend, not to keep that name, we knew that was a lost cause, but to keep some portion of it. And so that’s where we landed with it. We landed on Tiff’s Treats and they agreed. So both parties agreed. I think when you look back on it, you know, how, how old would we have been like 22 years old at the time?
Dan Graham (06:42):
Eventually they’re just like, Look, get rid of four of the letters.
Leon Chen (06:47):
It didn’t matter.
Tiffany Chen (06:48):
We should have just, probably in hindsight, we could have just rebranded and changed our name and it would have been fine and a lot less expensive, but that’s what we did. So now we’re, Tiff’s Treats as of 2003.
Lisa Graham (06:58):
I can just imagine trying to order a diamond and getting delicious cookies instead.
Tiffany Chen (07:01):
Oh, it’s an easy mistake to make :).
Lisa Graham (07:01):
Haha I’d be so upset, I guess I’ll go try and order that diamond again, but I’m glad I got these cookies. So I know you guys are also really philanthropic in the community. How does, how do you integrate, do you integrate that into your business or is that something you guys do more as individuals? How do you guys view philanthropy?
Leon Chen (07:20):
We actually started it more on the business side at first. It just made good sense to us. We feel what we do connects people. We talk about, we deliver warm cookies. You’re kind of delivering a moment as well. And so being a part of the community, delivering warm moments all over the community, we thought it was important to define ways to support the communities that we were in. So we, we kind of did that early on.
Tiffany Chen (07:44):
Yeah. I mean, early on, it was years and years until we paid ourselves anything. So on a personal level, we weren’t in any position for a long time to do anything like that. But the company, you know, one thing is people will come in ever since we first started, we were teeny tiny, they need donations for stuff. And so it was actually one of the first things that we sort of put a system around was how do you handle these requests that are coming in for donations? Because we wanted to make sure we were able to give out the right amount to the right people, but still stay within budget. And so very early on, we started an online form through our website that you could fill out instead of just randomly coming in and bringing a piece of paper and willy nilly saying yes and no. And so we systemized that a long, long time ago. And so we’ve been donating product and gift cards forever.
Dan Graham (08:33):
Yeah. How do you decide what causes are worthy of cookies?
Tiffany Chen (08:37):
That’s a good question. I mean, all causes are worthy of cookies. We don’t, you know, we don’t narrow it down in tightly, you know, we don’t say yes, we do these kind and no, we don’t do these others when it comes to donations. I think we have some rough rules around it, on the back end, just so that the people that are in charge of it have some kind of sense, but that’s a little bit more of, you know, how much advance notice do we have? Are we able to physically do it logistically? And so I did take notes. So this year in 2018, so far we donated $145,000 worth of product and gift card up to now, which is September.
Dan Graham (09:13):
So is it just any 501(c)3? If they fill out the form, they get free cookies?
Leon Chen (09:17):
No, not any you know, we have, we get so many, we literally couldn’t fulfill all of that. So there’s some stipulations around it that help kind of narrow it down. Because our concept is warm cookie delivery, we make sure with the organization, can you serve these warm? If you can’t, then that’s not something we’re wanting to do. We want to make sure we protect our brand. And people are used to having Tiff’s Treats while hot out of the oven.
Dan Graham (09:39):
Well, you know, at BuildaSign we had kind of a similar policy and we learned kind of in our first year that you may not have known, but the KKK is a 501(c)3 so we quickly found ourselves developing policies.
Tiffany Chen (09:52):
I think for us, you know, we generally, we let the people that are in charge of that use their common sense on what they, what they would do.
Leon Chen (09:59):
Right. And it wasn’t until 2008 when we decided, you know, doing product and gift cards is really nice and supporting, but we want to do something bigger. So with the opening of our third location, we decided to do a concept that we’ve done ever since then (through a store number 41 that opened a couple of weeks ago). And every store, thank you. Every store that opens, we sell cookies at a discount. So our normal dozen is $16. We’ll sell for $5 a dozen that day from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM and a hundred percent of the sales, not the proceeds or the profit, but a hundred percent of the sales up, up to a certain point that day up five, $6,000 usually will go to a charity of our choice and depending on what part of town we’re in we want to localize it and usually try to find a charitable organization that is part of the community.
Dan Graham (10:56):
How do you find the organization?
Tiffany Chen (10:59):
That’s a good question. So our marketing team kind of, we have sort of local marketing teams. So the local one will reach out for the community and kind of get feelers out, what’s out there, what’s in need. And it really varies what we do. We’ve done a bunch of them. So starting with store 3 all the way up to 41, we’ve done it every single time. So it’s been a bunch and we do some repeats, you know, we’ll repeat some, a few times and then we’ll always use new ones. We kind of ended up on that end more often than not, we’ll do a childhood charity. We just kind of gravitate to it.
Dan Graham (11:36):
I think the first one that I saw was Make-A-Wish, right?
Tiffany Chen (11:39):
Yeah. We did Make-a-Wish a bunch of times. And Make-A-Wish is some of my favorite memories of us at the, at the business at all. In those early days, I think the very first one we did, we arranged for a limo to bring the Make-A-Wish family to the event. And we did this several times, so not only were we donating the sales, but also we were creating a day for the family. And so we did a couple of times and dependent on the child, what they wanted to do, but usually they would come in and they would sell cookies for the day. So they’d be behind the counter or giving out prizes at the price.
Leon Chen (12:09):
So it was a memory, not just money donated to their college, right?
Tiffany Chen (12:12):
Anytime we’re able to do that. And you can’t always, you know, we did Foster Angels of Central Texas. We’ve done that several times. They can’t have their foster children come to events like this. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worthy of doing that.
Dan Graham (12:24):
Yeah it’s a great organization.
Leon Chen (12:25):
Right. And we gravitate personally and through the business we want to give to something tangible, meaning it’s hard to give five, six, seven, $10,000 into just the research bucket, which is needed and great. And I’m glad people do that. And we do give to research, but through specific charities or we like to give in Make-A-Wish, for example, we would like to give where we could see the kind of immediate impact.
Tiffany Chen (12:55):
Well that took us towards Make-A-Wish the first time, because we knew we were going to have about $5,000 or we estimated that’s probably what we would sell with those discounted dozens. I actually think that one was only two. We sold the cookies for only $2 a dozen and it was a madhouse. We didn’t realize that that was too low. It was insane!
Lisa Graham (13:11):
Haha people have the mad rush for the cookies.
Leon Chen (13:14):
Oh yeah, it was ten dozen minimum and people would get 10.
Tiffany Chen (13:15):
Yeah, that’s right. 10 dozen MAXIMUM, so you could buy 10 dozen cookies at $2 a dozen. And so people were coming in themselves, their spouse, even a child and wiping out 30 dozen. So we can make, we are built for volume. We can make 40 dozen every 15 minutes. But when two customers in the line say we’ll take all 40 of those dozen, you can imagine that the line starts stretching long.
Leon Chen (13:36):
They’re no longer $2 a dozen at our charity events.
Tiffany Chen (13:39):
Yeah. That was a mistake. But that was our Make-A-Wish. But, but even so, we thought, okay, this is about how much money we were going to be able to donate. What could we do that could actually have some kind of impact for that price point? And Make-A-Wish is great because that’s right about what they could make a wish for. And so it was neat for us to be able to say, this is where our money is specifically going towards. And so for all the charities that we do for these events, we’ll always ask, where will the money go that we’re giving you? So we can tell our customers, you know, when you’re coming out to this event, this provides 10 college scholarships, or this provides snacks for everybody at the camps for the summer or whatever it is specifically. It’s nice to be able to kind of know where that money goes.
Leon Chen (14:16):
Yeah. Something tangible. And our customers come out. For 9:00 AM Saturday morning openings, we’ve had customers come out as early as 7:00 AM on Friday, 26 hours in advance to stand in line all day long. And, and this particular one I’m talking about, it was a a hundred plus degree heat in the summer too. And so they do that because there’s a support. They want to support the charity. They want to support the company. It’s just a great win for the community. And so that’s why we’ve kept it going through all of our store openings.
Tiffany Chen (14:46):
We talk about it a lot as we open more and more stores in the same city, for example, you know, we’re up to, I think, 12 stores in the DFW area, the store number 13, also need one of these events. And every time we say, Oh, I don’t know if they do. And then we ended up doing it and then it’s so much fun. And everybody’s so involved with the community of it that you’re like, Oh, I can’t, I can’t take it away. I can’t not do it.
Leon Chen (15:08):
It’s become a thing. Tell them about the guy at the Arlington opening with his father and mom.
Tiffany Chen (15:13):
So we learned about this after the fact, but there was this really nice man that came to our Arlington, Texas grand opening. And he was one of the first people in line so he waited hours and hours. He came and took a picture with us and we talked with him and everything. And he was there with his mom and his stepfather. And then they went home and that was all we knew about it up until the next Dallas grand opening was about three months later, he came with his mom and then he sent an email to our marketing manager from Dallas and said, so I wanted to share this story with you. When we went to your Arlington grand opening, we had such a great time. It was the three of us. My dad is like the neatest guy and he never met a stranger. He’s such a friendly guy. And we just had so much fun in line, great experience for us. And when we went home that day dad wasn’t feeling so well. And he sent my mom inside and he ended up passing away of a heart attack that night. And so then three months later in the Dallas area, we had another grand opening. So he and his mom came out and redid the same event. They came early, they stayed in line. They met everybody in line, they donated to the charity. And so they just said, you know, thank you for providing, this was a wonderful last day for him. They loved it. And then they were able to, to commemorate that, you know, the second time, so that those kind of things are so neat for us. And that’s why every time we struggle with not doing a great opening, if we don’t think the store really needs it, but then we’re like, Oh, but what about things like this?
Lisa Graham (16:30):
Yeah. Well, I mean, that’s an incredible story and I think what’s interesting too, with the way that you guys are looking at philanthropy and working with the nonprofits. I think it’s really interesting. And something that I think is really beneficial for other companies and nonprofits to hear is how really can the nonprofit and the business work together to make an event that’s beneficial for each group involved, but also the community. And it sounds like that’s what you guys are doing with these in addition to helping the nonprofit, in addition to getting awareness for your business, it’s, you’re creating a community around your store.
Leon Chen (16:57):
It’s such a win-win and some of these events wouldn’t even be a very big success in some of our newer markets where the brand isn’t quite as strong. We really lean on the non-profits. They come out, we did one, Jenn Hobby is a DJ in an Atlanta radio station. Her daughter had I believe childhood leukemia and we, and she started a nonprofit based on her. And so she came out and used her voice on the radio and was able to get the community around, you know, the whole event. And so it really helps out the business. And like you said, the charity and the community.
Tiffany Chen (17:32):
Yeah. And some of the smaller charities too, you know, we’ve worked with all ranges of size, but some of the little bitty ones, they’re so excited for you to be their partner that they tell all of their friends. And they’ve got a support system, especially if it’s something that is personal to them, we’ve done one, several times called Connor Man Foundation. That actually came through us. One of our people at Tiff’s Treats it’s his nephew passed away when he was only four years old from a cancer called DIPG, which is extremely deadly and no cure insight. And so this was just like, how can you not partner with this? And so they, they were so neat and bringing out, of course, they’ve got lots and lots of people around them. And so, you know, they’re able to bring out people to the event that are there to support their charity, but they’re also there and you know, it makes for a neat event,
Leon Chen (18:21):
And there’s a fourth group that benefits, too. And you guys know this better than us, probably – it’s the employees. The team at Tiff’s Treats, everybody volunteers. This is a, especially if they’re on salary, they don’t make any extra money on the Saturday. And they go up there at 4:00 AM to start baking cookies. And they bake for 12, 13, 15 hours. And they do it with a smile on their face because they’re actually making an impact themselves. So that’s the fourth group that really benefits from all of this.
Dan Graham (18:45):
I have a kind of a scientific question. How many Leon, how many cookies do you eat per day?
Leon Chen (18:52):
Hmm. I wouldn’t say per day, if you do it by per day, it’s probably in the fractions, but I would say per week it would probably be one to two per week. People used to think that our jobs
Dan Graham (19:06):
How??
Tiffany Chen (19:06):
Iron will, unless it’s banana nut week.
Leon Chen (19:11):
Yeah. Which it was last week. But people used to ask us all the time like, Oh, you guys must just sit around, taste test and eat cookies. And we used to be like, yeah, people just think all we do is taste test cookies. But the bigger that we’ve grown, we really are taste testing cookies almost every day.
Tiffany Chen (19:25):
Yeah. We went through a period of time last year where we were doing so many taste tests, at one point, they said, can you come next door? We’ve got a taste test for you. And I opened the door and it was a huge conference table filled with six cookies of every single flavor. And I just looked at it and I was like, am I supposed to take a bite of all of these cookies? I cannot do that.
Lisa Graham (19:48):
What is, what is the strangest flavor y’all have tested?
Leon Chen (19:53):
Maple bacon.
Tiffany Chen (19:54):
We didn’t test that. We sold that one!
Lisa Graham (19:58):
It sounds delicious!
Leon Chen (19:59):
That skipped the testing processes. It was like, obviously.
Tiffany Chen (20:01):
I want to say we did a key lime that was like green, like neon green. And regardless of how it tasted, just one look at it and we were like, nope. That’s no, you can’t do a green cookie like that.
Leon Chen (20:15):
We test a lot and Tiff is, she’s the final voice.
Tiffany Chen (20:18):
We mess around with a lot of flavors. And usually they sound really good on paper. And then when you taste it, it’s like something is off about it. And so sometimes we can’t, sometimes we can’t fix it and we take a break for like a year and then maybe come back and see if like maybe a fresh idea has come up of how to make this flavor. Cause certain flavors work as dessert. And then when it doesn’t transfer into a cookie.
Dan Graham (20:40):
Is there someone whose job it is to just experiment?
Tiffany Chen (20:42):
Pretty much.
Leon Chen (20:43):
Kind of. Yeah.
Tiffany Chen (20:44):
I mean they do a lot more than, a lot of other stuff, but there’s one person in charge of sort of, well, I guess there would be multiple people. There’s one person in charge of sort of the logistics of trying things. And then another person who is in the kitchen stirring things up.
Leon Chen (20:59):
Special flavors maybe once a month, maybe twice a month on someone. So it’s not constant. So we only need about 12 to 16 special flavors a year. And we have the repeat favorites from all the years past that people would be up in arms if we didn’t do their flavor.
Tiffany Chen (21:13):
Like banana nut. I was doing the calendar and I’m putting out there, I was like, I’m not sure if banana nut is making the list, and he’s like, it better make the list!
Lisa Graham (21:25):
Perks of the job, Leon.
Leon Chen (21:25):
If I’m going to pull rank it’s for banana nut.
Dan Graham (21:28):
You kicked out some other amazing flavors, so you can keep it.
Leon Chen (21:32):
I do not care.
Lisa Graham (21:35):
And so you all started in Austin. What cities are you in now?
Tiffany Chen (21:39):
So we are in Austin, Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, College Station in Waco, Nashville, Atlanta. Did I leave anything out?
Leon Chen (21:49):
No, I think that’s it. That’s it, you know, Fort Worth, if you count that as a different city.
Lisa Graham (21:52):
And how does that look when you’re deciding to go into a new market, how do you decide to go to Atlanta or Nashville, or really kind of expand to a place that’s a good distance from your home city?
Leon Chen (22:01):
Tha was a real, you know, that was a real challenge to come up with what we thought would be the first good market outside of Texas, because the brand is so strong in Texas. But when you go out to someplace outside of Texas, you’re kind of starting over in a sense. And so I mean, Tiff, you explained this better than me, kind of our, how we whittled it down to Atlanta.
Tiffany Chen (22:20):
Yeah. I mean, because we could have gone anywhere, right? I mean, we were just looking for a new place, a new adventure outside of Texas to kind of get started on our way towards national expansion, which we’re doing but slowly. And so we just looked at every major market basically, and we did research on major markets and a lot of them, well, they all looked great for various reasons, but there were certain things that we wanted for just the first one outside of Texas. We wanted something that was relatively close, so we could get there on a direct flight. We wanted something that had warm weather. So we weren’t delivering in ice and things like that, that we weren’t used to right off the bat. Something with a lot of business districts. So we’ve got a lot of people in a dense area and that we can do that multiple times in the same city. Something vibrant and growing and exciting
Leon Chen (23:04):
Employer friendly, not friendly, but like HR, similar.
Tiffany Chen (23:07):
Similar employment laws to Texas, so that our HR department, wasn’t having to completely rewrite everything that we have for the second state. And so when, when all of these came together, Atlanta checked off every single box that we wanted. And so there was lots of other neat markets, but maybe it was too far. Maybe the weather was this, or maybe minimum wage, not minimum wage, but maybe the employer laws were so different than what we’ve got here. That would have been a huge undertaking for our HR department.
Leon Chen (23:34):
So we’ll figure all that out in the future. We just did not want that for our first out of Texas market.
Dan Graham (23:38):
Looking at the variables, right?
Leon Chen (23:42):
Looking at the variables and the the really cool thing about Atlanta is we also wanted to stay in a city that was close by other good vibrant markets. So we can kind of shoot off from henceforth. Nashville is only a few hours away.
Tiffany Chen (23:57):
It was both for distribution and for brand awareness that you’ve got jumping off points. And so that’s great. There’s all kinds of cities over there. And that’s kind of where Nashville came in too, because it was on our initial list as well. And so it was a perfect, it’s only a few hours drive from Atlanta. So it’s, that’s close.
Dan Graham (24:15):
If you had to pick the biggest challenge working together, what do you think it would be?
Leon Chen (24:19):
Oh, I think it would be just, it’s impossible to separate work and home. I mean, we’ve had fights in the past where we’re fighting and it gets personal and we’re like, but didn’t we start this, you know, like weren’t we fighting about flavor of the week or something? How’d your mom get in this conversation?
Tiffany Chen (24:38):
Yeah. You can do some real zingers. And then you’re like, wait a second. If this was a coworker, would I have ever just gone that low? There’s no way.
Leon Chen (24:45):
That’s the biggest challenge. But I think we’re, we’re better about it now.
Tiffany Chen (24:49):
Yeah. We’re better about it. I think we calm down faster. I think we get as mad, but we just like then one second and we’re like, ah, I’m too exhausted to still be mad about that.
Leon Chen (24:58):
And kids is the great equalizer too. I think. Yeah. They keep us so busy that when we’re at home now there’s a little bit less time to talk about work and get angry over whatever work or get fired up about this distraction.
Lisa Graham (25:12):
Yeah. Do you talk about the business around your kids to get them used to just knowing what you guys do?
Tiffany Chen (25:20):
We do. Yeah. I mean, I don’t know if they’re listening. What did Teresa say about Tiff’s Treats? By the way, they’re like four.
Dan Graham (25:28):
For their birthday, they get a tray of broccoli.
Leon Chen (25:32):
Today’s their birthday and we just came from their school. And we brought them cookies to their school. They were excited. What was he saying, not about school, but about, “And they’re delivered warm!”
Tiffany Chen (25:44):
Oh yeah that’s right.
Lisa Graham (25:44):
He’s your spokesperson,
Dan Graham (25:46):
The slogans are just drilled into their heads.
Lisa Graham (25:48):
He was doing pretend play and he goes, I’m making cookies. I said, okay. And he goes, and they’re still warm.
Leon Chen (25:55):
He picked that up somewhere.
Lisa Graham (25:56):
That’s amazing. Yeah, I mean, just also being parents of young children, it’s just funny what you talk about around them. And then you see them do pretend play. And it’s like, like at one point I was like, I don’t go to yoga that much. Why are you pretending to do yoga? And I was like, I need to like reevaluate how I spend my days and talk about my days to my children. But I like them marketing for your product. That’s great.
Leon Chen (26:17):
They picked up on it. I like it, I’m proud.
Lisa Graham (26:19):
Absolutely. Well, congratulations on everything and thank you guys for all that you do for the community. And we’re so excited for you guys to be expanding and seriously, your cookies are incredibly delicious.
Leon Chen (26:31):
Thank you so much, I would offer you one but we didn’t bring any.
Lisa Graham (26:34):
We’re only mildly disappointed.
Dan Graham (26:36):
Sure, sure – you ate them in the car on the way over.
Lisa Graham (26:38):
When you get invited for another podcast next week, you know…
Tiffany Chen (26:40):
It was a wink, wink – we probably haven’t been recording.
Lisa Graham (26:43):
This is just a soundproof room. Well thank you guys again for being here. It’s been really fun hearing your story and love your cookies. And if anyone is looking to order a fresh batch of cookies today, you can do so by visiting their website at www.cookiedelivery.com. And the Change the Rules podcast is sponsored by Chez Boom Audio. Chez Boom Audio is a leading audio post-production company for TV, film, advertising, audio books, and podcasts in Austin, Texas. And we are so honored to work in their studio with the wonderful Shayna Brown. You can find the [email protected] That’s C H E Z. Boom, audio.com. And if you want to hear new episodes every week, please subscribe to the change of rules podcast on iTunes.