One of the top three questions I always get asked is:
If I don’t sell my cookies, what do I do with them?
Because as cookie artist and content creator… I don’t actually sell my cookies!
Now pardon me while I get a little sassy here 😉
Can you believe that some people get so up in arms about the fact that I don’t sell my cookies (assuming I just throw them away) that they accuse me of egregious food waste… I do love when people target small businesses for being the cause of our problems when over 100 billion pounds of food is wasted from the US food supply annually.
Yes, my 2 dozen cookies are really wreaking havoc in those landfills 😉
But that’s beside the point because I don’t actually throw away my cookies!
Before answering the burning question, let’s start by answering:
Why don’t I sell my cookies?
The short answer is… I don’t want to 🙂
And the more shocking answer is… because I make a lot more money making digital content than I ever would selling my cookies 😉
I can’t tell you how many people have insisted that I would make better money selling my cookies than doing what I’m doing. They’ve clearly never tried to sell royal icing cookies lol.
When I threw myself into this hobby in full force in 2018, I quickly discovered after selling cookies for a minute that selling product was not for me. As anyone that sells cookies knows: it’s absolutely back-breaking time-consuming work and no one wants to pay you as much as your time is actually worth.
If I ever sold cookies for a living, I wouldn’t charge less than $20 per cookie… so do you really want me selling my cookies? LOL
It wasn’t until December 2020 when I made my first paycheck as a content creator (on YouTube) that I knew I’d found my own unique path with cookie decorating (which just so happened to not require me to sell a single cookie!).
Ok, so now that you know why I don’t sell them…
What do I do with the cookies I make for content?
In short, they don’t get thrown away!
I typically give them away to family and friends (my new dance friends are especially grateful). They make a great last-minute hostess gift LOL 😉
On occasion I’ve sold them to Instagram followers at a “sample sale” rate (aka significantly reduced rate) just as a way to engage my loyal followers in a different way.
But, honestly… these days I just give them to the first eager receiver! I only have so much room in my freezer and time is money (I don’t think people realize how much time it takes to post about selling the cookies, field all the inquiries, package the cookies to ship and bring them to the post office).
My motto these days with business has been: how can I work more efficiently and reach as many people as possible 🙂
Now for those who want to offer up their taste testing skills or want to be my next bestie, you should know I don’t actually make new cookies as often as you think 😉
In fact… I haven’t made any cookies since October 2024 (it’s currently March 2025 as I’m writing this). Crazy, right?!
As a content creator that makes online classes, my workflow is always super ahead of the game (you’ll often see Christmas cookies from me in October) and I tend to work in chunks with big breaks in between.
I’m in an odd “dry spell” of cookie decorating at the moment as I am focused on building other sides of my business (namely catching up on my blog), so I actually don’t know when I’ll even be making another set of cookies!
Hope that answers all your burning questions in this department 😉
P.S. If you have other burning questions I haven’t answered yet (related to cookies or not), feel free to drop them in the comments on this post and I’ll add them to my list of topics to cover in the future!