In August 1977, Debra “Debbi” Fields, a twenty-two-year-old mother with no business experience, and her husband, Randall K. Fields, a Stanford graduate, opened a cookie store called the Mrs. Fields Chocolate Chippery near Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. Her specialty was rich, home-style chocolate-chip cookies, which were baked throughout the day and sold warm. The company was later renamed Mrs. Fields’ Cookies.
Mrs. Fields’ began franchising in 1990; in 1993 an economic downturn forced Debbi Fields to sell Mrs. Fields’ Cookies to private investors in Utah. She was featured on a number of television cooking shows, and several cookbooks appeared under her name. Her book, Mrs. Fields Cookie Book: 100 Recipes from the Kitchen of Mrs. Fields (1992), sold more than 1.8 million copies and was the first cookbook to top The New York Times best-seller list. The company that the Fields created is today part of Mrs. Fields Famous Brands, which also includes the Original Cookie Company, Great American Cookie Company, Pretzel Time, and TCBY Yogurt and Ice Cream.
