Frosted Bakery owner handling fast success
Jennifer McGuire of Lake Villa has been in sales most of her career.
She always had creative ideas and wanted to pursue them but faced restrictions because of a company's culture or limited resources.
Now, she has partnered with three other investors to open The Frosted Baker in Gurnee. Since opening in July, the business has been producing about 5,000 cookies a day for weddings, baby showers, birthdays, sports teams, holidays and other occasions. They've been sold at Macy's, in catalogs and even in their own retail storefront. The company will be featured on QVC on Dec. 3, said McGuire, 46.
"It's been very stressful but a lot of fun," McGuire said. "I can make more creative decisions and do a lot more."
McGuire remembers that she enjoyed spending hours in Hallmark or other gift shops with her grandmother. She landed a dream job at 23 working for a company in the gift industry.
"I basically learned the business from the ground up at every position I had," she said. "I was always in some sort of sales manager role after that."
She was lured away by a cookie company in 2011 as a national sales manager and brought along many of her contacts, some of whom have been with her for about 20 years.
But by 2014, she wanted to do something more. Carol Digman of Lake Forest, who worked at an investment firm near McGuire's former cookie company, encouraged McGuire to start her own company. Digman liked McGuire's idea so well, she recruited Dan Walsh of Lake Forest and Mark Kelly of Chicago to invest in the new commercial bakery specializing in cookies.
McGuire started in January to build a business plan for The Frosted Baker, hire about 25 workers and move equipment into a Gurnee location. She also moved herself from Downers Grove to Lake Villa to avoid the long commute, McGuire said.
Now, McGuire can design any cookie she wants without having to worry about someone's approval. The company already has created about 3,000 designs and more are expected.
Business has been so good on both the commercial and consumer sides that McGuire already sees the Gurnee facility is becoming too crowded and a second site may be needed soon.
"I wished for this to be successful and it has been," McGuire said. "But be careful what you wish for. I just want to have time to sleep and take showers while keeping up with the demand."
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Jeff Beck, a social media expert from The Tranel Financial Group, will lead a Twitter party at 2 p.m. Tuesday about retirement strategies for millennials, hosted by the Great Lakes Credit Union in Bannockburn. Follow it at #MillionaireMillennials.
FastTracks
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