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Shannon Grauer of Freeport, Maine, started a fresh batch of brownies in Brunswick last week. (Fred Field for the boston globe) |
BRUNSWICK, Maine - Trina Beaulier taught school in a small Maine town for years, and when she retired three years ago, the shy, white-haired grandmother figured her busiest days were behind her.
Beaulier never imagined that at 59, she would be working 60-hour weeks as the chief executive officer of her own booming company, grooming former neighbors for management positions, trekking to Manhattan to promote her products, and signing up to take her first accounting class next spring.
All because she bakes a really tasty brownie.
A project Beaulier started on a whim, to fend off boredom as a new retiree, has snowballed into the stuff of small-business fantasies. Her company, Simply Divine Brownies, has 19 employees on the payroll, and is growing fast. Annual sales are expected to double to $600,000 this year. Last week, at the height of the holiday rush, her all-women crew turned out almost 6,000 brownies a day in a jam-packed command center in a former mill, where the kitchen, retail shop, and shipping center share one hectic, cocoa-scented room.
Beaulier and her brownies are part of a growing roster of successful small businesses in Maine. An annual economic study, the Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity, ranked Maine fifth among the states for its rate of small-business creation in 2006, when 420 of every 100,000 adult residents started businesses. Its position as the highest-ranked New England state reflected several years of gains in start-up activity.
"People are looking for quality of life, and we're finding higher-educated, wealthier individuals who are willing to start a three- or four-person shop and make a go of it," said Jim Nimon, director of the business development office for the state Department of Economic and Community Development. "As we get more technologically savvy, we're no longer like the last stop on the train line."
Relying on the Internet, hundreds of savvy Maine entrepreneurs sell and ship their beer, jam, coffee, granola, and sauces, among other goods, all over the country. Vacationland creations include vodka made from Maine potatoes in Freeport; biscotti from Belfast; and chocolate truffles infused with Earl Grey tea, lemon, and lavender on remote Isle au Haut, an island off the coast.
Beaulier, a pink-cheeked mother of five raised in the far northern Maine outpost of Caribou, was unprepared for the Hollywood following her brownies have captured.
After a trend-spotting website featured the brownies in 2005, designers of celebrity gift bags took notice. They included the Maine-made desserts along with the
"OMG! Need I say more? Delicious, sinful, outrageous!" reads a handwritten note on display in the brownie shop from actress Marcia Gay Harden, who won the 2001 Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her work in "Pollock."
Harden discovered the brownies at an awards gala in October for American Cinematheque, a Los Angeles cultural organization, where the chocolate squares were topped with pink tulle bows and edible digital photographs of the award winner, actress Julia Roberts.
Beaulier didn't set her sights on Hollywood when she decided to try selling brownies in September 2004, the first fall she wasn't in the classroom. Her brownies had always been popular; people often asked for the recipe. She knew she would have customers among her friends and neighbors.
Two months later in a friend's kitchen, Beaulier rolled out her brownie operation. Baking almost nonstop from mid-November to Christmas, the two women made and sold $25,000 worth of brownies in six weeks.
Lacking any expertise in business, they kept buying their ingredients at the local market, waiting in the checkout line with butter, eggs, and stacks of Ghirardelli chocolate.
"We didn't know anything about retailing," Beaulier said over coffee one afternoon last month in her bustling bakery, as employees wearing floral fabric caps wrapped and labeled peppermint brownies a few feet away.
Simply Divine launched a website in March 2005 and moved to its new Brunswick headquarters in April. At first, orders trickled in. "I remember when three or four was a big day," she said.
A month later, everything changed. On May 6, 2005, the influential, New York-based trend-spotting service DailyCandy.com featured the Maine brownies in one of its e-mail alerts, cementing the company's homespun image in the minds of 1 million subscribers.
"Remember this Kodak moment?" the rave review began. "You were in the kitchen baking brownies, Mom had the cutest smidge of flour on her nose, and Bing Crosby crooned in the background."
Beaulier and her friend were still the only workers at the fledgling company; they had yet to earn a cent. But all at once, they had name-brand recognition.
"We had 500 orders that morning," said Beaulier. "The Food Network and the magazines were calling."
The two women called on friends and family for help; Beaulier recruited her best friend, Julie Restuccia, and her 34-year-old daughter, Meggen Beaulier, to top jobs. Another daughter, an architect, designed the logo and packaging. Friends with corporate backgrounds dropped by to keep the books.
State economic development advisers stepped in with support, sending the business expert consultants.
"They were a little nervous," said Nimon, the business development head for the state. "They would have liked to baby-step it, but they had these opportunities, and they had to come out of their shell."
The company quickly developed new products: brownies in more than 30 flavors, such as bourbon, raisin, and blueberry; brownies shaped like lobsters, hearts, and acorns; brownies topped with edible corporate logos; a "breakfast brownie" made with fruit and nuts; and bite-size brownie truffles - 60-calorie nuggets covered in chocolate.
Straining, these days, to fit into its tight quarters, the company will move to a 2,500-foot space in Freeport next year, when it plans to unveil its next new product, frozen brownie batter.
Beaulier said she has struggled to stay afloat while using costly, all-natural ingredients. Though the 3- or 4-ounce brownies sell for almost $4 apiece - in Nordstrom department store cafes, on the Home Shopping Network website, and at simplydivinebrownies.com, among other places - the business recently earned its first profits, she said.
On a recent day in the Brunswick kitchen, baker Shannon Grauer piled 1-pound bars of butter in a pot for melting. The workers all wear pink and pearls daily, at Beaulier's request, in a tribute to her mother, who died of breast cancer.
When a stranger showed up to ask for a job, no one blinked. Beaulier said the company has drawn a steady stream of would-be employees, many of them overqualified for brownie-baking.
The woman, Wendy Butterfield of Bath, said she liked the idea of a "small, artistic business" run by women.
She paused, and confessed another attraction.
"I'm a sugar addict," she added. "What can I say?"
Jenna Russell can be reached at jrussell@globe.com.
© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.
