Check Out Daniele Boglivi-Fiori’s Story

Hi Daniele, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, let’s briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today.
While searching for a beautiful and unique wedding favor (21 years ago!) I stumbled across the art of decorated cookies in a Martha Stewart magazine. As a born artist and illustrator, I was itching to try it but was too intimidated to learn a new art form in time to make our favors. We ended up going with another favor for our wedding, but as a surprise, my best friend, Tamara, brought a basket full of iced red heart cookies to our rehearsal dinner. She had baked, iced, and packaged them herself! Love was the inspiration, and all these years later, her heart cookie cutter shape on those rehearsal cookies became the spread of the love heart icon we use in our logo.

From those fantastic heart cookies to our wedding invites, programs, and other paper goods, a small business was born. Between there and here, I spent several seasons working (again, thanks to Tamara) in the Emmy award-winning Art Department of the Martha Stewart show as a set decorator and prop stylist. While there, Martha learned that decorating cookies was my side hustle and asked me to present cookie ideas to her producers for the Holidays. Martha loved that I was using squeeze bottles to decorate (piping bags were too awkward for me, so I figured out an icing consistency that worked for the bottles) and thought her viewers would love it too. In one Valentine’s Day segment, she told me to ‘look onto the camera and tell everyone in TV land where they could buy my icing bottle kit.’ It was the most generous plug, and when I walked off the stage, my inbox overflowed with orders. After that segment, I began partnering with my favorite cookie-cutter makers, Beth & Ray, from CopperGifts.com. I learned so many things in those years working for Martha- from her, my art director and co-workers, the kitchen staff, and the camera crew. It was the job of a lifetime, and it was difficult to leave. I had the entrepreneurial spirit, though, and could not help by wanting to give my own business a go.

Soon after Hurricane Sandy, my husband was tired of apartment living and wanted to return to the shore area (he grew up in Sea Brite, NJ). We were lucky enough to find a beautiful Summer house in Ocean Grove, NJ, bordering on Asbury Park and its booming food scene. Since 2006 I had been working out of private “studios,” IE: apartments that I rented and would convert into a cookie studio, but once we became more immersed in Asbury Park’s art, culture, and food scene, we decided to make our Summer house our full-time home, I started feeling like maybe I’d want to open a cookie shop and become a part of this amazing community.

We opened SweetDaniB Cookie Kitchen and Petite Party Studio in the fall of 2017 and were warmly welcomed by this incredible creative community. In those early years, we tried to merge our “bread and butter business” of cookie favors and platters, as well as our cookie parties and classes, with a cookie café where people could walk in and buy cookies on the weekends. That café taught me so many lessons. Owning a restaurant that is open to the public- even a tiny one like our café was, is not a business you can adequately manage on the side. There are so many facets and factors and things to keep up with. Covid closed our café, and we decided not to re-open it. This was very sad for me to this day. I strongly feel that a café featuring our cookies with fantastic coffee drinks and teas where people can see us icing cookies could be a huge success. It just was impossible for me to make all of those concepts successful at once.

This November 5th marked our 5th anniversary in Asbury Park. I have been decorating cookies and teaching cookie classes since 2006, and I am proud to say I now have a staff of 6 amazing women, who I refer to as “my cookie sisters,” working with me. My original tagline when I started the business was “Life is Sweet” I have since expanded that to add “Spread the Love” because that is ultimately what we are doing with our cookie art. It is a labor of love that spreads love and makes people happy; as a result, we feel that love comes back to us.

Alright, 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?
The ongoing obstacle of a bakery focused on decorated cookies is the very slim margins. Your labor costs will outweigh any major profit, so you must think of other ways to make money and balance that out with cookie art. We tried a walk-in café/ bakery format for a while, which didn’t work with the hours these cookies take to create. You can’t guess if someone might walk into your bakery buy a $7 unicorn or a $3 heart; cookies have a short shelf life. There were weekends where we sold out, and also weekends where we sold 2 cookies.

Please tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others.
We are a majority pre-order cookie shop with a walk-up cookie window open from 12-4 pm every Saturday (unless we sell out sooner). We offer decorated sugar cookies as well as gingerbread and chocolate cookies seasonally. We also provide our café classics for pre-order, featuring our most popular cookie, the “Life Changing Chocolate Chip,” a decadent chocolate chunk cookie with sea salt. Our second most popular cookie is our “Sprinkle Party,” a soft vanilla cake-based cookie that is our ode to Birthday Cake. We require a minimum of 2 weeks for all custom orders, but some dates sell out sooner. We also offer our super original cookie-topped layered cakes, which are available in 4″ minis up to 10″. We are only able to ship individually wrapped cookie favors. Shipping orders require 3-4 weeks’ notice, depending on the distance. To make a cookie inquiry: sweetdanib.com/contact. In addition to cookie making, we also love to teach people how to DIY their cookie art. We host monthly cookie classes featuring various themes and techniques. To check our monthly cookie class schedule: sweetdanib.com/workshops-1

Any big plans?
I am developing a cookie product line featuring all my tools and original design cookie cutters. Alongside the products, we will launch a channel featuring videos with how-to’s, techniques, tricks, and tips. Cookie decorating is such an excellent craft. I cannot wait to share all I have learned in this journey with everyone!