Wednesday, 10 February 2021

1.00 PM MYT

By Ainul Azaman, Nurul Azriazela, Nurul Qasyida, Hannan Balqis & Khairul Hafiz

Who could predict by baking chocolate chip cookies from a small oven at your own kitchen makes your handmade one of the most wanted cookies in town.

Cookies Berantoo HQ (CB) was founded in 2019 by Siti Nadzirah Arpan, a young entrepreneur from Bayan Lepas, Pulau Pinang. The 23 years old Nadzirah, who is also an alumnus from Bayan Baru Community College, Pulau Pinang started her own cookies line and unexpectedly wins people’s heart.

She started her small cookies business at home by herself, where most of the processes were done manually without advance machinery. Although Nadzirah has the knowledge on pastry and culinary from the course she took in college before, she chose to focus on just one type of product.

“For now I will just focus on cookies, but unlike any other cookie product, Cookies Berantoo offers customers with a variety of flavours,” Nadzirah explained.

The Growth of Cookies Berantoo HQ

Cookies Berantoo HQ begins to introduce its brand with their first signature product, Cookies Berantoo Chocolate Chip Cookies. As the customers demand for more choices, CB took it as an opportunity to increase their product variety. As per request, CB produced several more variants of cookies, namely Cookies Berantoo Red Velvet Biscuits, Cookies Berantoo Coffee Chip Biscuits and their new best seller product, Cookies Berantoo Charcoal Stick.

In November 2020, CB succeeded in operating its own 1900 square feet store in Batu Maung, Pulau Pinang. Starting with Nadzirah herself operating everything, now CB has seven more employees to smooth out the operation and production flow. The employees were delegated in several work stations namely mixing, piping, baking and packaging stations.

“Before, I just used a small household oven, but now I already own three sets of two-layer gas ovens, a sealing machine for packaging, rack and mixing machine.

“The equipment is quite complete, so from there we can slowly improve in terms of production,” Nadzirah said.

Managing a business at such a young age is not an easy task and Nadzirah acknowledges it. She had gone through ups and downs throughout the journey. But, the struggles make her grow stronger with the support of CB’s team.

“My team is my backbone.

“When we have issues, I will face them one-to-one, discuss the problem and solution and decide for the best.

“For instance, we will have a Zoom meeting to discuss the best strategies to improve our sales,” she explained.

Achievement of Cookies Berantoo HQ

Consistency and determination is the key to CB's success story. Cookies Berantoo HQ evolves from a typical cookies business to the national market in no time.

In 2020 only, Cookies Berantoo HQ has produced 100,000 units of product in general. In March and July that year, the demand on CB’s products increased due to Movement Control Order (MCO) and Eid Fitr.

CB has increased the volume of stock in the two months to fulfil customers’ order. They increased the volume of the best seller CB Charcoal Stick production by 10% in March and July. Monthly stocks of everyone’s favourite CB Chocolate Chip Cookies also had risen by 5% and 25% in the two months respectively.

It is surprising that the products of Cookies Berantoo HQ have been so well-exposed by social media influencers. The review itself is capable of attracting more customers to buy their products. There's a lot of customer testimony, and most of them are great for their company's popularity.

When it comes to packaging Cookies Berantoo HQ wanted to serve customers with good hygiene and safe use of the product. The company therefore decided to use zip lock packaging for its signature product. In addition to the zip lock packaging, the company implements the packaging of the CB Charcoal stick. What makes this type of packaging more interesting comes with a chocolate dip inside. This added a higher marketability value for the company to sell its products.

Adapting with the Pandemic

The global COVID-19 outbreak that strikes Malaysia in the early of 2020 surely affects a lot of people, not to mention local entrepreneurs.

Nadzirah admits that the COVID-19 pandemic caused the production to halt. Like anyone else, she was also shocked with the unexpected news and felt discouraged at first.

“We in the production team felt so down because we can just stay at home and there is nothing else we can do as it is the first time facing this kind of situation.

“But after the fourth or fifth month of the year, I am thinking that it can be like that, I cannot just stop and need to continue the journey,” Nadzirah said.

As Cookies Berantoo HQ is active on social media, Nadzirah came out with the idea of making social media as a useful platform to improve the marketing of CB products.

“Nowadays, most teenagers use social media such as Instagram and TikTok, so I used that to boost sales and in that particular month, most of my product sold out in no time.

“It is because people will start craving when they are at home, so from there, our agent can catch the customers’ eyes by promoting and directly delivering to their doorsteps or by courier,” she added.

Opportunity for Others

The success of Cookies Berantoo HQ not only benefits Nadzirah, but she also shares the taste of fortune with others. She gives the opportunity for others to be CB’s stockists and agents. So far, Nadzirah already recruited six stockists and several agents from different states all around Malaysia.

She humbly said that it needs more herself to bring CB further. So, she decided to give others a chance to generate income through CB.

“I made Cookies Berantoo as a platform for students and housewives to create side income and took the initiative to hire them as part timers.

“Most of them are from my neighbourhood, so I teach them from A to Z, from zero basic skill on baking until now I can trust them with the responsibilities,” states Nadzirah.

She is determined to expand CB’s market and compete with other reputable brands in the global.

“I want to bring Cookies Berantoo further so that people are aware of this brand and to be the first in people’s hearts,” said Nadzirah.