Departments
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Week of 2 April 1999 |
Vol. II, No. 29 |
Feature Article
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Meredith Rossin (COM'92), owner of the Five Star Cookie Company in Brighton: "When you're in business for yourself, you make all the decisions." Photo by Julie Merritt |
Alumna parlays uncrumbleable start-up into new entrepreneurial Web venture
By Brad Seawell
Five years ago, when Meredith Rossin (COM'92) was scouting out a product to market, she found something people could really sink their teeth into: gourmet cookies.
Rossin's Five-Star Cookie Company opened in Brighton in September 1994 with promotions that included a BU student in a Cookie Monster outfit handing out flyers on Commonwealth Avenue. By the end of spring semester in 1995, she was averaging 40 orders a night -- enough to live on. Now she ships her cookies all over the country.
Owning her own business had been a dream since she arrived at BU from Old Bridge, N.J. in 1989. "When you're in business for yourself, you make all the decisions," says Rossin. "I like the idea of control: it's my success or failure."
Rossin's first entrepreneurial venture at BU was publishing a children's magazine, for which she sold advertising. The publication was a success, and Rossin set her sights on opening an advertising agency. With that goal in mind, she enrolled in graduate school at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., to study integrated marketing communications. "These days, college isn't necessarily over after four years," she says. "In many cases, if you want to compete, grad school is the next step."
While selling space in a student discount coupon book around Evanston, Rossin met a baker "with a business similar to the one I have now," she says, "making cookies for delivery" to Northwestern students. Time for a career change. She ended up working for him, learned the ropes, and then decided to try it herself. She immediately saw the potential for success in delivering cookies to Boston's huge population of college students, a group that makes up 95 percent of Five Star's business.
"I was getting sick of advertising," Rossin recalls. "I was good at it, but it wasn't very rewarding. What I wanted to do was sell something more tangible to people." Tangible as in something to touch -- and taste.
She also wanted to head back east. "I love Boston, and I had a great time at BU," she says. "And for a product aimed at the college market, there's no better place to be."
Before opening Five Star, she spent nine months devising a business plan, finding and leasing a space, getting city permits, hiring drivers, preparing a marketing plan, and developing cookie recipes -- no mean feat for someone who prefers take-out to cooking.
Since those early days, Five Star has quadrupled its volume. And business has been so good that Rossin will be taking on a new challenge. Where does today's successful entrepreneur look for her next business opportunity? In cyberspace, she says, and the emerging world of electronic commerce.
Rossin's new company will sell high-end housewares and specialty foods from a Web site: www.ez2.com. "It will be easy to find, easy to maneuver, and easy to order," she explains.
What about the cookie company? Rossin plans to sell the business that she built from scratch. She says that she won't miss the 13-hour workdays. "This business can run without me now," she says. "After five years, I have my life back."
That's doubly fortunate for Rossin as she gets ready for a new venture -- and for a new member of the family. She is expecting her first child in May with husband Gregory Manausos (SMG'92), an attorney in Boston.
Take heart, though. Rossin is making sure that Five Star will be around providing warm cookies and cold milk to BU and other area schools, including Boston College, Northeastern, Harvard, and MIT.