Best Bake Sale Yet!

On Thursday the 22nd, ‘Cookies for a Cause’ hosted its third bake sale in Showker Lobby from 2 pm to 4 pm. We had a fairly steady stream of students and professors buying cookies throughout the afternoon. We have decided to sell our delicious cookie bundles for only $1. We’ve definitely seen an increase in sales since lowering the price from $1.75 to $1, so we will be staying with $1 sales. Surprisingly, our most popular cookie sale was Environmental Sustainability, for JMU Institute for Stewardship of the Natural World. The second-most supported cause was Testicular Cancer, for Sean Kimerling Testicular Cancer Foundation. We had a great time selling cookies this afternoon! We greatly appreciate everyones contribution, and their help in supporting these causes.

Bake Sale Round 2

Our second bake sale on Wednesday, October 14, was a success! We decided to lower our prices from $1.75 to $1.00 per bundle, and we definitely saw an increase in sales. We started selling cookies earlier in the day by first selling a few bundles of cookies in our business classes, and continued selling at our official bake sale at 1:30pm in Showker Lobby. We sold the most bundles supporting the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and the American Heart Association.

Our next sale is Thursday, October 22, at 2:00pm in Showker Lobby. Stop by to support your favorite cause and enjoy some homemade cookies!

First Event

Cookies for a Cause had its first bake sale on Thursday! We were set up in Showker Lobby from 2pm to 5pm. We were selling three chocolate chip cookie bundles for $1.75 each. We received a lot of support and positive feedback from fellow students and COB Professors. Each bundle was wrapped and tied off with a different colored ribbon: pink, red, black, purple, and green. Almost every customer who came up to our table would immediately ask, “What’s with the different colored ribbons?” This gave us a great chance to explain to them what Cookies for a Cause is all about. Our most popular seller was the bundles of cookies that support the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. Our second top seller was the cookies that support the Skin Cancer Foundation.

We received some constructive criticism from our customers, suggesting that we lower the price for each bundle, or keep the same price but sell 5 cookies in a bundle. We will definitely take their suggestions in to consideration for our next bake sale. Overall, our bake sale today was fairly successful, but we had hoped to sell a few more cookies. We are hoping that we will sell more cookies at our next bake sale because we’ll be selling in the middle of the week, and at an earlier time in the day, so hopefully more people will be passing through Showker Lobby at this time.

Our next bake sale is next Wednesday, October 14^th from 1:30 to 3:30 in Showker Lobby. Make sure to come by to support the Cause of your choice!

Baking

On Tuesday, October 6, I went to my parent's house to make cookies. My sister and I made three batches, and I came home with over 130 cookies. Some of the cookies from the first trays we baked ended up being classified as "R&D cookies"--wrong size, overdone, etc. I took the cookies to my apartment and wrapped three cookies in a piece of saran wrap and tied the baggies with different colored ribbons. Each different color represents the charity that baggie will support.

FAIL! My burnt cookies didn't look this bad, but everyone gets the point... my cookies were burnt badly. I made them late Friday night and had a million things going on at once. I wasn't paying attention and the picture to the left is the result of my neglect. I was supposed to sell the cookies at my sororities 5K on Saturday to raise money for breast cancer. I tried to sell the leftover cookies, but of course it was raining. Therefore, people were not interested in buying anything because they were only worried about finishing the race and getting out of the rain. The 5K was a great missed opportunity to sell our cookies! Hopefully we can make up for the lost sales somewhere else. There are two lessons I learned this weekend; don't let me bake the cookies, and sometimes things aren't going to work out the way I planned them too!

Ribbons

I couldn't go with Leigh and Amanda today to go shopping, but I did do some shopping of my own. I bought the material we are going to sell the cookies in, and I also bought the ribbons to tie the bags with. I bought pink, purple, red, and black which are the respective colors of our initial charities. I came across and idea that might be interesting for our new business to feature. We can have a suggestion box where people can recommend other causes that we could support during a certain month. For example, we could use a green ribbon one month and donate the money to JMU's Institute for Stewardship of the Natural World. It is only a thought, but we will see how our first sale goes.

Ingredient Shopping

Leigh and I went shopping at Wal-Mart Friday afternoon for ingredients for the cookies. We purchased flour, sugar, brown sugar, butter, eggs, and of course several bags of chocolate chips. We're planning on baking at my parents' house on Tuesday evening to prepare for our first sale this week. We'll be selling our cookies in Showker Lobby from 2 pm to 4:30 pm this Thursday, October 8th. I hope we got everything we need!

'About Me' Continued...

A.L.L. Inc. was created by three JMU College of Business students: Amanda Grace, Lindsey Oliver, and Leigh McVay. We're in the business of baking homemade chocolate chip cookies!

"Cookies for a Cause" is located in Harrisonburg, VA and we have already made arrangements to host our bake sales on JMU's campus. When you buy one of our delicious cookies, you have the option of choosing which cause you would like to support. Each cookie is pre-packaged and sealed with a colored ribbon. The color of the ribbon represents which cause you choose to support. The pink ribbon is for Breast Cancer, the red ribbon is for Heart Disease, the black ribbon is for Skin Cancer, the purple ribbon is for Testicular Cancer, and the green ribbon is for Environmental Sustainability. So if you decide to buy a cookie that is packaged with a pink ribbon, a percentage of your proceeds will be sent to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

Each person who buys one of our homemade cookies can help make a difference!