NYC bakery finds a niche in pie crust cookies and second chances

Janie’s Life-Changing Baked Goods finds success with unique twist on classic treats

The name of Janie Deegan’s business describes the profound impact it has had on her life. She started the New York City-based bakery, Janie’s Life-Changing Baked Goods, at the end of 2015 after fighting addiction and homelessness.

“Baking and cooking were always close to my heart and provided an outlet to help me find myself,” she says. “When I was at my lowest point, baking helped me feel in control and gave me self-confidence that I could succeed.”

Today, Janie’s has three retail locations for her bakery in New York City and a thriving e-commerce business. It also regularly sells at Queens Night Market, an open-air, family-friendly market in Queens that showcases up to 100 independent vendors each week to celebrate the cultural diversity of New York City and Queens.

Janie’s signature product, the pie crust cookie, has a bottom layer of pie crust, a cookie filling in the middle and a streusel-like crumble top.

Her most popular four flavors — pecan, chocolate, triple berry, and apple — are sold year-round, and 25 more varieties are rotated in seasonally.

“It’s fun to see customers try it for the first time at places like Queens Night Market,” she says. “Nobody knows what to expect. When they take a bite, their eyes go wide.”

Deegan recently shared her insight into the important role of business peers to success, how to prepare for growth, and how she evaluates business risk.

Tip: Build a peer community.

Deegan turned back to baking in 2013 after she became sober following addiction and experiencing homelessness. Baking had always made her happy as a child and she began baking for herself and friends, not thinking that this step could lead to a successful company.

“I had never worked in the culinary industry, and it felt like there were a million reasons why I couldn’t make a living from my baking,” she says. “Then a few experiences gave me the boost I needed to try.”

A friend hired her to bake a cake for a big event, and that gave Deegan the courage to try selling Thanksgiving pies. The business started to take off from there, and she quickly needed to expand outside of her home kitchen. Working with nonprofit food incubators such as New York’s Hot Bread Kitchen and her fellow vendors at the Queens Night Market helped Deegan come up a steep learning curve. She learned how to find shared commercial kitchen space, apply for a food handler’s license, and many other details she needed to understand about running a food business in New York City.

“I learned the value of community in the small business world during that time,” she says. “I realized that someone else selling baked goods wasn’t my nemesis. We could talk and learn from each other. It can be really lonely as an entrepreneur — making friends and asking for help enabled me to thrive.”

For example, when the pandemic hit and she shifted to an e-commerce model, Deegan needed to quickly get up to speed on essentials such as how to pack her perishable baked goods safely for shipping, how to integrate technology for creating shipping labels with her website, and how to manage online customer service.

“What’s really cool is that New York City has such a great small business community,” she says. “I knew there were people I could reach out to who were a few steps ahead of me and had already figured some of these things out.”

Bottom line: Think of peers as valuable sources of information, support, and encouragement, not as competitors. While competition may exist between you and similar businesses, relationships with other business owners are an important resource for information and support. Create connections to share resources, identify solutions to problems, and find friendships that can keep you motivated as you build or grow your company.

Tip: Be ready for growth.

Janie’s Life-Changing Baked Goods has had several periods of sudden expansion, and Deegan has had to learn how to structure her company to succeed during these times.

“We’ve been very lucky and the company has received many promotional opportunities in a short time,” she says. “We also had to scrabble to be sure that we could make the most of what came our way.”

An appearance on Andy Cohen’s Bravo talk show “Watch What Happens Live” in October 2021 was one of the first. A friend of Cohen’s gave him some Janie’s cookies and he was so impressed he invited her to appear on his show. This amazing opportunity was only two months after Deegan opened her first retail bakery though and the Bravo show brought an immediate $150,000 spike in sales to Janie’s website. The next day an additional $350,000 of orders rolled in.

“I had no idea of the reach of his show, and we were not prepared. It took our five team members six months to fulfill the orders. It was incredibly special, but we had to figure out how to go from making 500 cookies a day to 4,000 or more.”

Right after the Bravo appearance, the baker was also featured on NBC’s “Today” show as part of a Small Business Saturday feature. To avoid another crunch, Janie’s temporarily shut down online orders, and set up a form on its website to capture email addresses so people could join a waiting list and get notified when cookies are available. The waiting list system continues today; each week, the bakery only sells as many cookies as it can physically produce in that time frame.

“We learned what our team can handle, and what we can produce in a set period of time, so we can try to guarantee someone will get their order in seven days without overextending our team,” she says. “It’s a tricky thing in the age of social media — you never know when a celebrity or influencer with a huge following will mention you. Those kinds of opportunities don’t happen often, and when they do you want to be prepared to take advantage of them.”

Bottom line: Know your capacity for company throughput and take steps to build plans for a sudden increase in orders. Establishing partnerships with businesses that can help you in a busy time, identifying freelance or outside resources you can quickly call on, and establishing a means of capturing contact information for all new prospects and customers who come your way, are all key to helping you to prepare for sudden spikes in business.

Tip: Take smart chances.

In 2021, she launched her first retail bakery, and this spring opened the doors of her third NYC brick-and-mortar location. The past few years have not been without their challenges — like many businesses, she has faced high shipping costs, supply chain shortages, and rising costs of everything from cardboard boxes and rubber gloves to chocolate, frozen raspberries, and butter — but she is happy she took a chance on herself and has continued to take carefully calculated risks.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, she had no choice but to explore new sales options since the markets and catering she had been relying on shut down.

“The pandemic spurred me to move into e-commerce and to open retail locations — without that nudge, it might have been years before I took that chance,” she notes. “It’s important not to overexpand, but you have to be willing to take the right risks. For us, that was taking advantage of the current bakery trend.”

Deegan describes herself as fiscally conservative and she operates with a mandate to avoid risky decisions unless they are backed by sales.

She used a small business loan with good terms to help start the business and took advantage of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and Economic Injury Disaster Loans during the pandemic. This funding helped as she was launching the e-commerce side of Janie’s, which now accounts for 50% of the business, with an average order of $40.

Looking forward, Deegan is also considering consumer packaged goods opportunities for the business. Pre-pandemic, the business had a presence in about 30 Whole Foods grocery stores. Because her current product is baked to order and not mass-produced, packaging her products for sales in other locations presents some challenges. New products, such as pie crust bites, may help open opportunities for packaging and selling her products in other retail locations.

Today, Janie’s currently employs 15 people, including eight bakers. When it comes to staffing, she has learned the importance of delegation. “I realized that if I’m in the kitchen baking cookies all day, the business can’t grow because I can’t focus on being strategic,” she says. “It’s hard to give up control. But every single time I take something off my plate to a trusted team member, I’m able to really flourish because I have more time to look at the big picture.”

Deegan’s difficulties in life have shaped her non-traditional hiring policy. “I want to give people second chances, so I look beyond whether someone has a culinary degree or specific food industry experience,” she says. “I try to get a sense of whether they have a good work ethic and will they find joy in being part of our team.”

Bottom line: Taking risks is necessary for growth. Know what elements of your business are most important to your decision-making and then be willing to take chances that you have carefully considered. Discussing big initiatives or risky endeavors with a trusted advisor, banker, attorney, mentor, or peer can help. Also, financing can help you position your company to expand into new areas, create product lines, and hire the team you need to succeed.