Facing rising costs, a Minnesota home baker makes a career pivot
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By Kristin Schwab, Nicholas Guiang and Sofia Terenzio | Marketplace
Listen to Marketplace each weekday at 6 p.m. on MPR News. This story originally aired on “Marketplace” on Jan. 1, 2025.
Owning a small business means you’ve got to be nimble with things like hiring, supply chains and customer needs. Sometimes, though, being nimble means flipping your business on its head — transforming your work so much it almost feels like you’ve made a career pivot.
That’s where Maddie Gartmann is at. She’s the owner of Garty Goodies in the Twin Cities which started as a home bakery and has grown into something else entirely. Gartmann spoke with Marketplace’s Kristin Schwab to talk about how her business has changed in the past year. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.
Kristin Schwab: So I think the last time we talked was about a year ago, and you were selling cookies through your business and doing some content creation. What’s happened in the last year?
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Maddie Gartmann: Yeah, so pretty much for the start of 2024, I decided that I was going to go all-in on being a content creator. And there were a couple things that sort of inspired that. One is that I was starting to see that I was making more money that route, and another was that I was starting to see that I was making a lot less money by selling cookies. So it seemed like the right time for me to pivot, just because I think people just weren't buying custom, hand-decorated cookies like they used to.
Schwab: Why do you think that is?
Gartmann: I think it had a really big boom during the pandemic, simply because so many people were on social media, and so many people were seeing my business all the time because they were on their phones. And then, you know, I can only speculate, but I’m guessing a lot of it has to do with the economy.
The price of ingredients, it continues to go up. And to make it worth my time, I have to charge quite a bit for a cookie. And I don’t blame people if that’s not where they’re putting their money, you know, is towards a fancy cookie. So, to me, it just made sense to pivot and go a different direction with my business.
Schwab: Well, you are teaching them how to make their own cookies, right? Tell me a little bit more about that and what that transition was like for you, because you were a teacher before this?
Gartmann: Yeah, so I didn’t want to put all of my eggs in one basket of content creation, because that’s a little bit scary, but I knew I could always fall back on teaching. And luckily, there’s always been a market for people that want to learn how to take the classes. There’s a market for people that just want a fun activity to do with their friends or with their sisters.
And I got to partner with a local gardening center that has a great workshop area, and basically have been able to host a cookie class about once a month for this entire year. And they’ve sold out every single time, so that's been really, really great.
Schwab: Oh, wow. And then tell me more about content creation. How is that going? Because running a cookie business and being a content creator are very different things.
Gartmann: Yeah, that’s very true. Originally, I got my start on TikTok in 2021, and then I’ve kind of been able to add the other apps — Instagram and YouTube and Facebook — and have been able to improve my content creation game. You know, as far as upping the cameras and the microphones and the editing software, so I just post videos of me decorating cookies along with voiceovers.
Sometimes I tell stories, sometimes I just talk about my decorating process. And I also often do mystery cookies, where people help me figure out different designs for the shape that I'm decorating. And kind of it engages a lot of people, and people really enjoy watching it.
Schwab: What are you thinking as we get closer to a potential TikTok ban? Are you worried about how that might affect your business?
Gartmann: I’m thinking that I’m really grateful that I have this partnership to teach classes, and this is the entire reason why I never put all my eggs in the content creation basket. I also am very grateful that I took the time in 2024 to learn the other social media apps too and to grow a pretty decent following on the other apps, so that I wasn’t just completely relying on TikTok.
Just because I think it’s always kind of been a whisper. We’ve gone through this wave a couple times of “Are they going to ban it? Are they not?” This is the first time that it sounds like it’s pretty serious. And so I’m just grateful that I’ve had other things to fall back on.
Schwab: So before this, you were a high school teacher, right? What did you teach?
Gartmann: I taught high school English for eight years.
Schwab: I don’t know if that's what you imagined you would do for the rest of your life. Did you imagine that this is where you’d end up?
Gartmann: No, not at all. And I keep saying, “I don’t know when it’s going to end.” You know, I just, I don’t know if it’ll just keep going, but I’m just going to keep riding this train as long as I can. But, yeah, I definitely never imagined that I would wind up here. This all started as a way to make a little extra income when we decided to have me stay at home when my son was born.
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