About Chef Lorin Peters
Lorin Peters is an Austin, Texas native, University of Texas alumna, and the founder of Cookie Rich, an Austin-based cookie company she launched in 2020. She built a decade-long career as a savory chef that included a position as chef de partie at the three Michelin-starred French Laundry in Yountville, California under Thomas Keller, as well as work at Abacus and other prominent fine dining establishments. When the pandemic forced her out of the restaurant industry, she pivoted to the cookie concept she had been developing privately, launching Cookie Rich from a commercial kitchen on Austin’s North Lamar. The business grew rapidly, expanding to nationwide shipping and opening brick and mortar retail in Austin. Cookie Rich is built around sandwich-style dome cookies with flavored fillings, developed using the same precision and ingredient quality Peters applied in fine dining kitchens.
Episode Overview
André Natera sits down with Lorin Peters to talk about what it actually looks like to take a serious fine dining background and redirect it into a consumer food product business. Peters traces her path from The French Laundry and Abacus to the moment she decided to launch Cookie Rich, and explains why she saw the cookie category as a place where fine dining precision and ingredient standards had real market value.
They cover the business strategies behind Cookie Rich, how Peters approached branding and marketing as a chef without a background in either, what she learned about scaling a food product from a ghost kitchen to a retail concept, and what advice she has for chefs who are thinking about making a similar pivot. It is an unusually practical episode for anyone in the culinary world considering what a business built around their craft could look like outside the traditional restaurant model.
Topics covered in this episode:
- Lorin Peters’ career path from The French Laundry and Abacus to founding Cookie Rich
- Why she saw the cookie category as an opportunity to apply fine dining standards to a consumer product
- The business strategies behind building and scaling Cookie Rich from a ghost kitchen concept
- How she approached branding and marketing as a chef without formal business training
- The importance of ingredient quality and fine dining precision in a consumer-facing product
- Lessons from growing Cookie Rich to nationwide shipping and brick and mortar retail
- Advice for chefs thinking about pivoting out of traditional restaurants to build their own food brands
Guest
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