Sharmila Melwani of Plantation has come a long way since she baked cookies for her daughter’s first birthday 17 years ago. After that, she got a few orders and her hobby quickly turned into a wholesale business, landing clients like Epicure in Miami Beach and Whole Foods Markets. Like many small businesses, Shar’s fledgling bakery had to be resourceful: “I enlisted my son when he was in third grade and he packed 1,200 cookies for me.” Last year, Cookies by Shar delivered their biggest order to a single client, 47,000 cookies to Williams Sonoma shops across the country. This year, because of the pandemic, they’ve added direct-to-consumer sales online.
Today, Melwani and her team work out of their kitchen in Davie, where they turn out thousands of sugar cookies decorated in royal icing along with conventional cookies: chocolate chip cookies. “Right after Christmas, it looks like a tornado was here,” she says, gesturing toward big bins filled with 700 cookie cutters, a wall of multicolored sprinkles and colored sugars, and stacks of packing materials. A recent task: setting up an assembly line to make 800 sets of green witch fingers with roasted almond fingernails. “My staff has great energy,” she says. “Now we can do this with our eyes closed!”
Find Cookies by Shar at Whole Foods Market or order online.
