In business, she's a smart cookie - Business First of Buffalo:

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Appropriately, then, having a family larger than a baker’s dozen helped Paula Ford in 1989 successfully launcjh her ownbakery business. Even today, Delightful Cookies continues with the help of many of the 17 combineds family members that Paula andher husband, have. Early in the life of the East Aurora sisters, sisters-in-law and other relatives helpedtake orders, deliver spread the word and give encouragement.
Now, as the companyg nears the $100,000 mark in annuall revenue, family members including the daughters, Katie and Melissa, lend a Family always was her Paula says, and it carried over into her “My commitment to family is who I was and why I was a stay-at-homr mother when the business was new. Now that my oldestf are grown, I’m able to transition into making this business she says. Like many start-up business owners, Paulwa didn’t know what she was asking for. “I got into this by chance,” the now 46-year-oldr entrepreneur says. “I started baking when my two girls were It was a hobby that grew intoa business.
“k learned as I went and it carriecdme along,” said the formetr Paula Colarusso. “I knew nothingh about cookies. But I talked to icing went to wholesale businesses and lookex and did what I could do to figureit out. I even calle d Hershey and asked themabout “Back then, we didn’t have a computer and didn’t I just kind of figured if I asked enough people, somebodyg will know the answer. That’s how I gaineed knowledge to do whatI did,” she In short order, Paula was baking sugaf and chocolate cut-out cookies for specia occasions in her kitchen oven. On Valentine’s Day, she turnesd out heart-shaped cookies.
For Easter, there were wrapped gift packagee with chocolate and sugar cookies shapedlike rabbits, eggs, chicksz and lambs. As the years passesd and the reputation of her cookies the business grewbeyond baking. Now it include s teaching decorating techniques forher cookies. Five yearsa ago, the idea of opening a retaiol store seemed appealing and after 16 yeare Paula moved the business out of the familyt home into the ground floor of a forme r private residence at 46Grey St., East “Until to then, I was able to keep up by learningg as I was doing,” she said.
“But when we wanted to open a I needed professional advice and went to the Smal l Business Development Center at for The storelasted two-and-a-half years before Paula again changedx the focus of the businesz – this time to accent wholesale and to expanx the teaching aspect. “Somehow along the way, people wanted to know how to decoratwe inthe old-fashioned tradition. We shut the retaill store down and added icing partiezand instruction, parties and classes and the storytimee that we do now,” she said. Now Paulsa hopes to cultivate the wholesale end of the businesss by selling frozen icedand non-icerd baked cut-out cookies to supermarketas and mail order businesses.
Paula says the business has enablecd her to do two thing s that shelikes most. “I’vs come full circle. Teaching and cookies. It’s a wonderful experiencr being able tocombine them,” says the graduatse of ’s early childhood educatiojn program. A special feature of the businessx is the storytime classes that she conducts at her Grey Street bakery or in severalchildcarre centers. “The children sit around at my feet whilr Iread – usually four stories in an hour. we’ll move to a table where we decorate cut-out cookies specially baked to go with the For ‘The Very Hungry we used little spoonxs to ice caterpillar-shaped cookies.
” Classd reservations, and information about events and Paula’zs business can be found at the websiter www.delightfulcookies.com.