Cookies

A recent episode of Food Network’s Recipe for Success follows a Chicago-based woman named Hilary as she starts to develop a small business baking cookies. The cookies look amazing, and impress everyone who tries them. She sells the cookies by mail, to local theaters, and eventually through four local Whole Foods stores. She makes so little money that she has to give up her apartment and take side jobs cleaning houses. This is not actually encouraging.

The gender roles are really quite stark. Hilary has had two failed businesses before, and the only other woman featured in the episode is a sister who repeatedly bad-mouths her. Her initial loan comes from a male relative, she gets accounting advice from another male relative, she gets business advice from successful male bakers, the buyers she meets with are almost all men, the baker who she ends up contracting with to arrange larger-scale production is a man, and her housing woes are solved when her boyfriend “allows her to move in with him” to end the episode.

On the bright side, the show is realistic and open about the numbers of a small food business, and packs a lot of challenges and possible solutions into a short episode. And unlike reality television, this is television about reality. If you like the look of the chocolate caramel coffee cookies or banana bread cookies, you can place an order.