Sweet Success for Fairytale Brownies

Eileen Spitalny and David Kravetz, co-founders of Fairytale Brownies, have a long history of collaboration. Meeting in kindergarten, the two became fast friends, but school projects wouldn't be the only thing these two developed together. Armed with Kravetz's family brownie recipe, the pair launched Fairytale Brownies In 1992 out of a small, Scottsdale kitchen. Like many other small business owners, they worked 8-hour night shifts after their full-time jobs and spent weekends selling their gourmet Belgian chocolate brownies at street fairs and festivals.

Soon, they discovered many of the customers at those street fairs lived outside of Arizona and wanted the brownies shipped to them. That prompted the team to change from a wholesale to a mail-order model. As the business grew, the shipping department spent 10 hours every day sorting packages sent by air or ground delivery.

Gift-Giving Logistics

UPS worked with the small business to streamline the shipping process saving $15,000 in 2012. "We save so much time with UPS because we no longer have to separate our ground and three-day packages," Kravetz said. "It's helped us to provide faster and more reliable service to our customers." Implementing comprehensive software solutions like UPS WorldShip® simplifies Fairytale Brownies' shipment processes and helps minimize costly mistakes as well.

Fairytale Brownies ships more than 6 million baked goods each year – especially around those gift-giving holidays. "Operational flexibility is critical to meeting our customer's expectations," Spitalny said. "When our peak season hits, we might still be hand-packing brownie gifts at 10 p.m., and UPS will come as late as 11 p.m. to pick up everything so our orders arrive on time."

Fairytale Brownies uses a "delivery by" model to process orders to have gifts arrive on a particular date such as a birthday or anniversary. The shipping team works backward from the selected date using visibility tools like Quantum View® Manage and Quantum View® Data to help determine the most economical shipping option. With these tools small business owners can schedule inbound and outbound shipments and track packages. 

To avoid losing revenue or precious brownies, the team uses UPS Delivery Intercept®. "If an address is incorrectly typed into our system, we can identify it, and Delivery Intercept allows us to reroute the package," Kravetz said. "In 2012, we redirected more than 1,500 packages which allowed us to keep our customers happy – and save time and money in the process."

Sweet Tweets

Fairytale Brownies understands the value of online engagement and UPS included the successful e-tailer in a social media campaign for Valentine's Day. Fairytale Brownies offered a deal that UPS shared on its Facebook and Twitter channels. "We received more than 150 orders from that promotion alone," Kravetz said. "It's a testament of how UPS supports its small business customers, and promoting us through their social channels has created tremendous opportunities for growth."

It's grown a lot in 20 years, but the Fairytale Brownies team still hand-bakes and hand-packs each brownie, cookie, or truffle. Adding a great logistics partner that implements solutions specific to a business' needs makes it a recipe for success.