Fancypants finds its sweet spot in East Walpole by Jason Turcotte (Walpole Times)In the same manner they bake their gourmet cookies, entrepreneurs Maura Duggan and Justin Housman started their East Walpole business from scratch. Fancypants Bakery began in the couple’s kitchen in Boston where the two slaved over the oven, baking two dozen cookies at a time. There they used to hand roll the dough and do all the baking from their small GE oven.
"We started working out of the house because it’s so risky starting your own business," Duggan said. "We started slow; I kept my job for the first three months." My, have things changed! Now the two-person operation has tripled in manpower; they have hired four employees and their bakery at 153 Washington St. has given them the room they needed to grow.
Duggan and Housman – who both have a background in education – now bake on Blodgett ovens. A larger, more industrial-looking Hobart mixer allows them to produce dough for close to 600 cookies in a single batch. And a dough sheeter negates the need for manual rolling. The secret to their success was trial and error. Duggan began by visiting Boston area bakeries; she networked and surveyed the products. And she found there to be a lack of a mid-priced cookie. Meanwhile, Housman, who briefly attended culinary school in New York, started mixing and matching recipes to develop an original shortbread concoction.
But as the cookies garnered more attention, the couple needed room to expand. A member of the Massachusetts Specialty Foods Association, Duggan met a woman occupying a space on Walpole’s Washington Street. A year after meeting her, she informed Duggan she was moving downstairs in the renovated mill complex, freeing up an empty space for Fancypants. They jumped at the opportunity. - complete article
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