Mrs. Fields is a chain of stores widely

known for selling freshly baked cookies

in malls throughout the United States

and other parts of the world. Seriously,

I think these are amazing cookies and

that seems to be the general opinion. If

you have somehow not had one before, I

recommend you seek out a Mrs. Fields and

give it a try. However, that is becoming

more and more difficult. Despite

receiving so much praise, Mrs. Fields

has been on a constant decline for quite

a while now. From what I can tell, the

brand was at its biggest in 1993 when it

had 780 locations. And over the past

three decades, most of them have slowly

shut down with only about 250 remaining.

I know that looks bad. And the reality

of the situation, I think, is actually

much worse than that graph demonstrates.

Compared to 30 years ago, a much higher

percentage of those stores are either in

small kiosks or combined with a frozen

yogurt concept called TCBY, the

country's best yogurt. And to be clear,

that is the name of it, not my own

personal review. Not to mention that

many more of them are now located

outside of the United States, and all of

them are now franchised. Even though

Mrs. field still has high brand

recognition claiming that 81% of the

people in the United States have heard

of them. I think that the perception of

the brand is much different today. It is

to a point where understandably many of

the people watching this probably could

not tell me much about the woman

herself. You might even think that Mrs.

Fields is some kind of fictional

character like Mrs. Butterworth and that

is unfortunate. Debbie Fields is in fact

a real person. She was the one who

started the company, turned it into a

national brand. Throughout the 1980s,

she was almost like an icon for female

business owners and probably more

heavily associated with cookies than

anyone else on the planet. So, in this

video, I want to talk about the woman

that's behind this famous brand while

identifying some of the biggest reasons

behind its decline. You know, before

Debbie Fields, the woman that was most

associated with cookies was probably

Ruth Wakefield. Yeah, there's something

about the name Field. She is commonly

credited with inventing the chocolate

chip cookie. She was in charge of a

restaurant called the Toll House Inn,

where she created chocolate chip cookies

by adding chopped up pieces from a

Nestle chocolate bar into her recipe.

Nestle bought the rights to print the

recipe on their chocolate packages and

then millions of people used it to bake

their own chocolate chip cookies at home

and maybe even discover their passion

for baking. One of these people was in

fact Debbie Fields. When she was 13

years old in 1970, she used that recipe

to make chocolate chip cookies where she

became really good at it. Over the next

few years, she modified that recipe

until she developed it into her own.

That was a big hit with all of her

friends and family. When she was 18

years old, she met a man named Randy

Fields who was 10 years older than her

and already a wellestablished economist.

She got married within the year. So she

was in the situation where her husband

and most of the people around her were

noticeably older and more successful. As

an uneducated teenager, she was feeling

insecure about herself, living in the

shadow of her husband and struggling to

find her own identity. She describes one

particular incident as a tipping point

where she used the word orientated and

was embarrassingly corrected to use the

word oriented. After that, she became

serious about taking her passion for

baking and turning it into a career.

Against the advice of, well, just about

everybody around her, the couple secured

a $50,000 loan and used it to open her

first cookie store. It was in Palo Alto,

California on August 18th, 1977, which I

just want to point out was

coincidentally only a few months after

the passing of chocolate chip cookie

inventor Ruth Wakefield. Starting off my

list, the first reason behind the

decline of Mrs. Fields would have to be

expanding too quickly. Mrs. Fields

existed as a single store for about 2

years, but shortly after opening the

second one, they started opening them at

what I would consider to be an

irresponsible pace. At the start of the

1980s, she was practically unknown. And

by the end of it, she was like a

celebrity with her name on almost 500

stores across the country. But already

at that point, things were getting

shaky. Profits were up and down and they

were closing a lot of underperforming

stores. And trust me, many of them were

struggling to find customers. They were

in poor locations and just not meeting

expectations. So many of them were not

selling enough cookies to justify the

high rent that they were paying.

According to Debbie Fields, they made

some poor real estate selections

starting in 1986 based on the advice of

outside professionals. And that was

difficult, especially considering that

there were additional factors

complicating the situation. Like the

next one on my list, there was a rumor.

Yeah. In the 1980s, there was this story

going around about the company that I

want to make clear right away was

completely false. But according to the

rumor, a fan of Mrs. Fields cookies

wanted to make them herself at home. So,

she called the company asking for the

recipe. Someone from the company said

that they would send it to her for the

price of $2.50. Naturally, she thought

that they meant $2.50, so she agreed to

it. But after receiving the recipe

through the mail, she learned that her

credit card had actually been charged

$250.

They refused to give her a refund. So to

get back at the company, she printed up

a bunch of flyers with the recipe on

them and started handing them out to

just about everybody. Again, it was all

completely made up. The company keeps

the recipe secret and certainly does not

sell them to people over the phone, but

for whatever reason, there were these

papers circulating with the recipe on

them claiming to be hers. Now, I do not

believe that this was a major factor

behind them declining, but it is

interesting to talk about. And Debbie

Fields has acknowledged that it had a

negative impact. She went so far as to

put a note up in all of the stores

addressing it and assuring the customers

that the story was false. The other

factor complicating things at the time

was the economy. Mrs. Fields has always

sold high quality cookies made with

premium ingredients that are bigger and

tend to be more expensive than most

others on the market. In short, buying a

cookie from Mrs. Fields is by no means a

major purchase, but probably something

that you might want to pass on if money

is tight. On top of that, we also have

to recognize that mole traffic tends to

be lower when the economy is slow. So,

when everything slowed down in the early

1990s, it hurt sales, which could be bad

news for a company that was already

overextending itself. I don't have too

much to say here other than the fact

that the performance at Mrs. Field

stores has been closely tied to the

state of the economy. So, I'm going to

move on to the next reason behind the

decline, which might just be the most

impactful one on the list, and that is

the fact that Debbie Fields was too

controlling. She had so much pride in

her cookies that she did not want anyone

out there messing them up. I mean, she

would go around and visit the stores,

sample the ingredients, test the

cookies. She was becoming friendly with

the employees, closing stores for the

day that were not up to her standards.

The company would famously refuse to

sell any cookies that had been out of

the oven for more than 2 hours.

According to Debbie Fields, it's the

lack of perfection that drives me crazy.

The disappointment and frustration are

indescribable when I find my cookie

standards aren't being met. Now, you

might be wondering why this is even an

issue. You typically want a business

owner to be passionate like this, right?

Well, not quite like this. I think

you'll agree that this level of

involvement is almost impractical when

you have over 500 locations. A

specialized simple store like this is

such a perfect concept to franchise.

Have other people pay you to open their

own Mrs. Fields where they sell your

cookies using your recipe and your

ingredients. I imagine that many people

were advising them to do this during

that time because that is what almost

everyone else was doing. But because she

was reluctant to give up any control to

potential franchises, she instead took

out loans and reinvested profits to open

her own stores.

>> All of the ingredients are made to her

specifications, shipped pre-measure to

each store. She hasn't franchised the

operation to ensure that control,

>> which is still respectable, but I think

proved to be a poor decision in this

case. By 1993, after dealing with all of

these negative factors for years, the

company was no longer able to keep up

with its debt payments, and Debbie

Fields was practically forced to give up

80% ownership of it. In her own words,

the only thing I could do was swap my

ownership for a reduction of debt. I

didn't have a choice. It was like

parting with my family, like giving up

for adoption. Those are strong words. At

that point, she stopped leading the

company, but continued to be a part of

it as chairman and consultant before

leaving entirely a few years later.

Obviously, a sad ending for her career

with the company that she had built. But

had she been more willing to give up

more control while they were growing,

they likely would not have had such an

issue with debt payments, and she

probably would not have been forced out

of there. Following her departure,

things continued to be tough for the

Mrs. Fields brand. And I believe that is

mostly attributed to the remaining two

reasons on my list. Starting with

competition. Now, when it comes to

grabbing something to eat at the mall,

there are more options today than there

ever were before. Back in the 1980s, the

most concerning competitor was probably

the Great American Cookie Company. The

founder of it, Michael Kohl's, even said

that part of their success comes from

the fact that they had to be aggressive

in expanding just to keep up with Mrs.

Fields. But during the 1990s, I would

say that the more pressing competition

was coming from pretzel makers. I have a

video that goes into more detail, but

ANTS was kind of leading the way while a

bunch of smaller companies like

Wetszel's Pretzels started popping up.

Mrs. Field's response to all of this was

to try and maintain their market share

by acquiring some of these other

mall-based snack brands. All in the late

1990s, they bought pretzel time, pretzel

maker, and the great American cookie

company. Now, you might see where this

is headed because investing all of this

money in mall-based companies in the

1990s may not have been the smartest

decision, leading me to the final reason

on my list, malls. On that first day in

1977, Debbie Field struggled to sell a

single cookie for the first few hours.

But things turned around when she

started handing out samples in front of

the store. Right there, she learned the

importance of customers being exposed to

the product. Malls became a logical spot

for Mrs. fields because people smell the

cookies as they're walking by and want

to buy one impulsively. And the same

thing goes for the pretzels, too. So, by

the 2000s, they were selling all these

foods in malls that do not really sell

very well outside of malls, while the

popularity of malls was declining. And

yet again, the economy was complicating

things even worse than before. In short,

they sold off all of those other brands

that they had bought about a decade

earlier and shortly after filed for

bankruptcy. However, they were still the

owner of TCBY, the frozen yogurt company

that they had bought in the year 2000.

But by this point, just everything was

declining. So, in 2014, they came out

with a new strategy where they would

open co-branded stores outside of malls.

The reasoning was that people would be

attracted by the frozen yogurt and then

want to get a cookie once they are in

there. I mean, the logic makes enough

sense, but I don't think there is much

evidence to suggest that the plan has

been all that effective because both

brands have continued to decline even

further. Let me know in the comments

what do you think about Mrs. Fields,

both the person and the company. Despite

so much of it falling apart, I think

it's hard not to have respect for

everything that she accomplished. And

it's also difficult just not to like

these cookies. It's not often that a

brand declines because they were too

concerned with quality. As always, I

want to remind you that my list does not

include every potential reason behind

their trouble, just the ones that I

found to be the most interesting and the

most impactful. Let me know if you think

something should be added or subtracted

from it. And any other thoughts you have

about Mrs. Fields, leave them in the

comments. I'd like to hear what you have

to say. Thank you for watching.