Hands in the Cookie Jar
sign in the shop reads “No dessert is too pretty to eat,” but Corso’s Cookies, 314 Lakeside Road, Lakeland, is certainly trying to make one. The gourmet cookie factory specializes in elaborate cookie bouquets that can be shipped anywhere in the country for just about every occasion. “These are personalized gifts,” says Tina Corso Hess, 35, the owner and original baker. “We wanted them to have a wow factor.”
With more than 300 different cookie designs and hundreds of themed bouquets, the originality and attention to detail provided by each bouquet contributes to that wow factor. Specializing in vibrant-hued, frosted buttercreme shortcake cookies, the business has morphed from a childhood passion for Hess into a full‑fledged factory producing thousands of cookies each day.
Corso’s Cookies had a booth for the first time at this year’s Taste of Syracuse and also debuts at the New York State Fair, showing off their craftsmanship and selling individual cookies, including a horse‑shaped cookie developed especially for the event.
A flour bouquet: Peter and Tina Hess show off one of Corso’s Cookies’ creations, celebrating summer. MICHAEL DAVIS PHOTO
But Hess didn’t start her business so grandly; it began in her kitchen. In 2001, after taking some old family recipes and baking some edible gifts with her mother, Judy Corso, she began branching out and selling gift baskets involving her creations. “I always had a love of art as well as for baking,” she notes. “This allowed me to add some creativity and artistry.” With her mother’s help, Hess filled the kitchen with cookies and started passing out business cards. By 2002 she quit her job as a realtor in Syracuse and opened up her first shop, located at 107 Montrose Ave., Westvale.
Hess and her mother operated the business together for two months, baking, frosting, arranging and wrapping each gift individually, before the task became too demanding for just the two of them. “We started out with people who could help with the wrapping,” Hess says. “But the first year I baked every cookie myself.”
As demand for Corso’s cookies grew, the business flourished. In 2005, Hess’ husband Peter Hess, 40, quit his own job as a business consultant and came on full time to handle the business aspects of the bakery. Additionally, the couple created a Web site and began selling through third‑party online companies like ProFlowers.com and Amazon.com, which sent business through the roof. “Within hours of being up {on their first third‑party Web site} we had 20 or 30 orders,” says Peter Hess. “Now we do 90 percent of our business through the Web.”
In 2006, the couple bought and completely renovated their current location in Lakeland, transforming an old warehouse into equal parts cookie factory and office. It is here that their new workforce, more than 20 employees who bake, decorate and wrap bouquets all day, create the works of art Corso’s is known for. The company has even done specialized cookie bouquets for companies such as Vera Bradley, eBay and QVC.
With expansion the cookie operation has gone through a few alterations. Old family recipes have been modified for freshness. Cookie designs, once drawn up and executed by Tina Corso Hess herself, are now created by teams of professional cake decorators, who are “master copycats” at designing each cookie. They have experimented with different frostings to find the perfect one that looks and tastes good, but can also withstand shipping.
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