Today we’d like to introduce you to Jennifer and Erik Sayce.
Jennifer and Erik, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
Erik and I got engaged in April 2016. As we scratched the surface of planning our dream destination wedding we soon realized how expensive it would be! Without wanting to give up on our dream wedding and also not wanting to go into debt over it, we thought of finding an alternative stream of income to help us get there.
Just a few weeks later we were out on a date and weren’t quite ready to call it a night but also didn’t want to pay for another expensive drink or wait for the dessert menu. We walked back home from downtown talked about the lack of unique things to do complained about our hankering for a cookie. Right there in the middle of the common is where the idea of Goodnight Fatty started.
Both of us were excited about the simplicity of milk and cookies and felt confident we might be able to make it a reality if only for a few months to save some money for the wedding. We both promised each other we wouldn’t tell a soul. Who wants to be that person who tells everyone their super cool idea… and then never does it?
We scraped together a few hundred dollars and put about $1,000 on a credit card. We worked out a deal with a small local coffee shop to let us use their space while they were closed to sell warm freshly baked fatties (that’s what we call our cookies), and just a couple weeks later we were open for the first time.
I will NEVER forget that first night. We hadn’t done any marketing, and we still hadn’t told a soul that we were trying this crazy idea of a late night cookie shop. We baked our first batch of fatties in our new adorably small convection oven and I chased people down the streets asking if they wanted free samples of our cookies. The first customer who gave us cash helped us realize we never even brought a register with change! (forehead slap)
Within a few weeks of operating our line formed out the door of the tiny little cafe and we were ordering more ovens to help keep up. We quickly outgrew the small space and briefly took our business on the road while we looked for a more spacious, and fitting space for our business. We wanted to find a part of Salem that nobody has been before, but still close to the heart of all the restaurants and bars.
It didn’t take long before we found the perfect spot that we now call home. Our customers enter our shop through a dark alleyway tucked behind the popular restaurants – Rockafellas and Ledger. We convert a large conference room into a bake shop every Friday and Saturday night from 7pm-11pm. We offer three unique and different flavors of fatties every weekend with bottomless milk. Our menu is top-secret, so customers have to come in to find out what we’re offering for the weekend!
We’ve recently won the “New Business of the Year” award given by the Chamber of Commerce. We have a growing number of staff and even have a hard time keeping up with orders. It sounds silly, but we usually have to limit our customers order to a half dozen cookies just so we can keep up with the demand, and so we have enough cookies for the customers in line behind them!
Erik and I are now doing Goodnight Fatty full-time. Never, in a million years, would I have guessed I’d be baking cookies in an alleyway for a career.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
If anybody says yes to this – something is wrong. Of course it hasn’t been smooth! To start something new, especially a business technique that has never been done before, takes an enormous amount of risk-taking.
There has been more chaotic, nerve-racking, hopeless moments than I can count. But having each other and, quite honestly the very best customers and surrounding businesses ever, has really made this journey and those scary moments worth every second.
Erik and I have two main struggles. To put it simply, we just don’t know how to be good “bosses” to our staff. We are pretty unconventional with our approach to business and work so it is challenging to teach our mentality to new staff. We seem to always be listening to podcasts and reading articles on this topic. We definitely have some work to do. In the meantime, our crew will have to keep trying to read our minds and listen to our blabbering.
Our other struggle we are currently ironing out is defining each of our job roles. We recently decided to divide the business into two categories: Commercial Kitchen which has turned into Erik’s area and Retail which is more my thing. There are many overlapping duties and it’s tough to know when to back off from one another’s turf.
Please tell us about Goodnight Fatty.
We are a late-night bakery that offers bottomless milk and cookies (three different flavors each week) in a hidden part of downtown Salem.
I am ecstatically proud of our social scene. We get crowds of all ages in our shop and I absolutely love watching customers talking to one another while playing Jenga or a game of Guess Who. We get to watch adults turn back into kids. We’ve had impromptu dance-offs, milk-drinking contests, and even a time when the entire room was singing Bohemian Rhapsody. Yeah… that really happened.
We try to create a unique and fun experience that isn’t only about stuffing yourself with warm cookies, but hopefully makes our customers want to stay to watch us bake, listen to music, play a game or watch our “oddly satisfying” video reel on the television. If that’s not your jam, our exit leads you out to old town hall area where there is plenty of quiet seating under the stars.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
As you can probably tell by now, we live for childhood (or child-like) memories, so I adore this question.
I was probably about ten years old and on this cross-country road trip with my parents and two sisters. We had been driving for an entire day and ignoring all the scenic points of interest Mom and Dad were pointing out (which now I’m realizing I totally missed out on).
The three of us crammed in the backseat opened a giant bag of Twizzlers. Within minutes the three of us were on the sugar-high of all sugar-highs. We started helicoptering them above our heads and whipping my mom in the arm while singing Love Shack at the top of our lungs. Our mom was red-faced angry and telling us to calm down. At home they would drag us outside and make us run around the house three times after eating a bowl of ice cream. So instead, she joined in on the fun and turned the music up louder while all five of us were dancing and singing like total maniacs.
Contact Info:
- Address: 18 Higginson Square
Salem, MA 01970 - Website: goodnightfatty.com
- Phone: 978-822-2277
- Email: jen@goodnightfatty.com
- Instagram: instragram.com/goodnightfatty
- Facebook: facebook.com/goodnightfatty
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