Cookie Time plans 'interactive' world expansion

SWEET AS: Cookie Time has chosen Queenstown for its first franchise.

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Cookie Time plans to launch a global cookie franchise, starting with its first store in Queenstown on May 10.

The well-known baked treat is a familiar sight in dairies throughout New Zealand, but Cookie Time wants to start selling from its own purpose-built stores for a push overseas.

General manager Lincoln Booth said the move was about 18 months away and dependent on the success of the Queenstown store.

"We chose Queenstown for that tourist reach, to build awareness overseas," he said.

The store will be designed with the help Weta Workshop's Richard Taylor and would be an "interactive brand experience". Booth was tight-lipped on what an interactive cookie-oriented store would entail but said milk would be on the menu.

Although a strategy on the overseas push was still vague, markets targeted first included Britain, Australia and Dubai. The already cookie-saturated United States market would be avoided to begin with.

"The US has grown up with the cookie so it would be difficult," Booth said.

Apart from Queenstown, the franchise model would not be used in New Zealand. Ideally, Cookie Time would have 30 franchise stores globally within the five years, he said.

The plan is ambitious but Cookie Time has a record of defying probability.

Company founder Michael Mayell built the company from humble beginnings, baking his first commercial batch of just over 3000 chocolate chip cookies 27 years ago in a rented Christchurch bakery.

Booth said people did not appear to be cutting down on cookie consumption during the recession, with the company experiencing double-digit growth last year.

- © Fairfax NZ News