Financial advisors Ashley Dando and Bill Hannah learned long ago how to sweet talk clients.
Give them cookies emblazoned with the company logo.
The challenge, they found, was in finding the right treats.
“Either the cookies tasted great but weren’t pretty or looked good and tasted bad,” Dando said. “There was only one place we found that had both.”
The bakery turned out to be down the street from their Wells Fargo Investments office. Two Smart Cookies offered that combination of aesthetic and gastronomic bliss.
Dando and Hannah liked the product so much they bought the company.
The sale closed earlier this year, with the original Two Smart Cookies, Annette Rock and Amanda Cannon, staying on for several months during a transition period.
Dando and Hannah — or more specifically, their families, as Dando and Hannah remain employed as financial advisors — are now operating the business on their own and are intent on building on the company’s first decade of success.
“We want the product to continue to be consistently delicious and remain the Savannah community’s cookie of choice for special occasions,” Dando said.
The past
Two Smart Cookies has posted sweet returns since Rock and Cannon teamed to open the bakery in 2003 in a small, cinderblock building on Hodgson Memorial Drive.
Rock and Cannon had long been friends, bonding during soccer games and other athletic events their children participated in. They often made cookies for postgame snacks or team parties and were often told they should go into business for themselves.
“It was a total leap of faith on our part,” Rock said. “All I could think about was how many thousands of cookies we had to sell to pay the bills.”
Once Two Smart Cookies opened, word-of-mouth marketing resulted in quick success. Orders for customized cookies rolled in.
By 2007, the business had outgrown its first home. Rock and Cannon moved Two Smart Cookies to its current location near the intersection of Stephenson Avenue and White Bluff Road.
Along the way Rock and Cannon realized they had more than cookies to sell. They had a concept. They packaged their business model and cookie recipes and shopped for buyers. They didn’t want to franchise, nor did they want to license their business name to others.
They found several aspiring entrepreneurs interested in the concept. Four cookie makers, stretching from Oklahoma to Alabama to South Carolina, have built their business around the Two Smart Cookies concept.
Dando and Hannah were to be the fifth. They approached Rock and Cannon last fall about consulting on a small store they wanted to open in Beaufort, S.C., where Dando lives.
“They suggested we buy the business instead,” Dando said.
The future
The new Two Smart Cookies are enjoying their venture.
Dando’s father manages the store along with Hannah’s wife, Mary Beth. The Hannah children work there, too, part of a busy staff of 20.
The notion of owning a family business appealed to Dando and Hannah. That it had been a family business under the previous owners made the transition easy.
“They started it and nurtured it as it grew up,” Dando said of Rock and Cannon. “We didn’t want to turn it into something else. They love it, and I think they saw that we would love it, too.”
Dando and Hannah would like to spread the love. They are financial advisors so they understand the growth potential. They still intend to open a cookie store in the South Carolina Lowcountry.
Don’t expect to see multiple Two Smart Cookies stores locally, though. Dando and Hannah are committed to a quality product — the cookies are made and iced by hand — and protecting the company’s reputation.
“We’d like to grow it,” Dando said, “but not at the expense of existing business.”
ABOUT TWO SMART COOKIES
Starting 2003 by homemaker Annette Rock and speech therapist Amanda Cannon, the bakery is renowned for its custom-made cookies. Two Smart Cookies moved from its original home on Hodgson Memorial Drive to its current location at Stephenson Avenue and White Bluff Road in 2007. Rock and Cannon sold the business earlier this year to a pair of long-time customers, Bill Hannah and Ashley Dando.