A Dash of Family Tradition and Heaps of Hard Work at Klara’s Gourmet Cookies
PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHRISTINA RAHR LANE
Klara Sotonova’s emigration from the Czech Republic, at age 19, was fueled by a single desire: to turn her dream of becoming a business owner into a reality. The former Czechoslovak communist regime cast a pall upon her childhood, spent in the village of Chrast, two hours south of Prague. Lack of access to mass-produced baked goods necessitated home baking, a tradition Klara learned from her great-grandmothers and brought with her to the United States. As to her recipe for success?
“A lot of hard work and a lot of sacrifices, that’s for sure,” says Klara, who first arrived in the Berkshires in 1999 after applying through an agency in Europe that matched international staff with summer camps in the U.S.
“The director of Eisner Camp [in Great Barrington] picked me from the applications,” recalls Klara of what turned out to be a fortuitous assignment. After spending that first summer working as the dining room supervisor, Klara was invited to extend her stay as assistant to the kitchen supervisor; in the off-season, she worked in the bookkeeping office. In another bout of serendipity, Klara went on to meet her future husband and business partner, Jefferson Diller, while working with him at a local restaurant.
“One day, I just decided to bake for him,” Klara says nonchalantly. Using her babi’s recipe, she whipped up a batch of old-fashioned European-style vanilla walnut crescents. Klara remembers his response being along the lines of, “Wow, we should make these.” The cookies worked their magic, and Klara and Jefferson became a couple. And six months after that first batch, Klara’s Gourmet Cookies, LLC, was born.
The former Czechoslovak communist regime cast a pall upon Klara Sotonova’s childhood, spent in the village of Chrast, two hours south of Prague. Lack of access to mass-produced baked goods necessitated home baking, a tradition Klara learned from her great-grandmothers and brought with her to the United States.
A SWEET DEBUT
“In 2006, we started with $1,500 in cash and an Amex card,” says Jefferson of their humble beginnings. From their tiny kitchen in a Great Barrington apartment, they wrote a business plan and determined their monetary and equipment needs. They debuted their product at Construct’s annual May- Fest, an “Evening of Tastings” featuring small bites from area restaurants and food vendors.
“We used [the community event] as a promotion to get our name out there and promote our Web-based business,” says Jefferson. The strategy worked: They secured their first wholesale account with the Marketplace Kitchen (situated within Guido’s in Great Barrington at the time). From there, the pair gradually added accounts across the Berkshires and into Connecticut’s northwest corner. In 2008, they began selling directly to consumers at a trio of local farmers markets, a move that ultimately bolstered their local wholesale business.
Notable milestones came in 2010 when Klara’s enlisted the help of food brokers in New England and beyond, as a sales force for the growing wholesale business. By that time, the couple had purchased a two-family commercially zoned home in Lee; they baked downstairs and lived on the second floor—an arrangement that made work-family balance easier when they welcomed a baby daughter into their lives. Further business growth would come in 2013 when, on the heels of their inaugural appearance at the Fancy Food Show in New York City, Klara’s received its first purchase order from TJX (the corporation that owns HomeGoods, Marshalls, and T.J. Maxx), which remains a customer. “Our move to participate in trade shows accelerated our wholesale business and required us to focus almost solely on that,” says Jefferson. In 2015, they began visiting potential retailers in person.
“Klara and I would pack up samples and hit the road to do face-toface selling of our products around Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut,” says Jefferson of a strategy that garnered them roughly 100 direct store accounts.
In 2016, they were approached by Chex Finer Foods (a third-generation, family-owned, natural and specialty foods distributor based in Mansfield) to partner in the distribution of Klara’s products. The result: Since 2017, Klara’s Gourmet Cookies have been stocked and sold throughout the six New England states and New York. Jefferson says the partnership with Chex was essential to “transitioning from a direct-to-retail business to a distributor-driven small manufacturer.”
COVID LEADS TO SOUL-SEARCHING
Looking back, Klara considers the Covid-19 pandemic the most stressful time in the business’s history. Her small but mighty team was whittled down from seven to three. “We mechanized whatever we could and simply bought machines to help us produce and package our product,” she says. The pandemic also prompted some valuable soul-searching. “Covid taught us to get rid of things that were time-consuming and not making us money,” says Klara. “We pared it down to what sells and we learned to say no, nicely.” But while some things have changed, others remain the same.
“I get going at 1:45 a.m. and Jefferson is up by 3:00,” says Klara. “The first batch is in the mixer by 3:30.” Their day is over at around 2 p.m., enabling the couple to pick up their 14-year-old daughter, Mika, at school. Each small-batch, made-from-scratch variety (there are seven in total) begins with natural ingredients and zero preservatives. “On any given day, we bake about 650 pounds of finished product in a single flavor,” explains Klara of a process that not only avoids cross-contamination of allergens but also increases efficiency. A single batch of shortbread begins with 300 pounds of butter, 350 pounds of flour, and 42 pounds of egg yolks; the classic coconut macaroon is built using 300 pounds of coconut and 75 pounds of honey—each yielding 125 12-count cases of packaged cookies.
The shift from Babi’s handmade cookies to wholesale distribution has required small tweaks along the way, as evidenced by Klara’s Chocolate & Sea Salt Shortbread. “Originally, they were just little, round [shortbread] circles half dipped in chocolate,” says Klara of a product prone to deteriorating before reaching its destination. A simple twist—subbing small chocolate chips and adding sea salt for a pleasant crunch—resulted in the company’s most popular flavor to date. With increased production, the couple outgrew their home-manufacturing space. While they still live in their two-family home, in 2018 they purchased a 2,400-square-foot building in Lee that now houses their commercial kitchen; they also rent a 1,200-square-foot warehouse in Lenoxdale.
“Covid taught us to get rid of things that were time-consuming and not making us money,” says Klara. “We pared it down to what sells and we learned to say no, nicely…. Today, we are running the business and not the business running us.”
COMMUNITY SUPPORT
Over the years, the couple’s partnership has naturally evolved in keeping with their inherent strengths. While he’s at the helm of production (which includes ordering ingredients and cleaning the kitchen) and oversees the warehouse, she’s largely in charge of packaging, shipping, and keeping the books—as well as production planning, which ensures a taste of tradition in every cookie they create. Baking is a joint effort.
“Today, we are running the business and not the business running us,” says Klara, adding that having a plan is the secret ingredient to her success. As to a close second? “The local community has been really supportive,” she says. She doesn’t have her own storefront, but she knows that she has a strong local following from customers who buy her products from Berkshire retailers. “So ultimately they are supporting [two local businesses at once],” Klara says. She’s grateful for the community she now calls home. In the Berkshires, Klara’s Cookies can be found at Guido’s Fresh Marketplace, Berkshire Food Co-op, the Farmstead Creamery at High Lawn Farm, Wild Oats Market, Big Y World Class Markets, to name just a few. Nationally, the brand is in prestigious outlets such as Balducci’s, Fairway, and Zabar’s. T.J. Maxx and Marshalls continue to give her valuable exposure that also drives Web traffic and orders from afar.
Looking back, the couple’s made-from-scratch business has indeed been a success. In May, Klara and Jefferson will celebrate 18 years of Klara’s Gourmet Cookies—a burgeoning business that’s grown from a generations-old family recipe to classic and familiar white bags dotting shelves from coast to coast. Call it a recipe for (sweet) success, proving that perseverance— and practice—might indeed yield perfection by the dozen.
