Mrs. Fields takes her chocolate chips sprinkled on pecan pie these days. And a caterer does the baking.
Debbi Fields started her dessert empire by making chocolate chip cookies from scratch in 1977. Her first bakery and store, the Mrs. Fields Chocolate Chippery, opened that year in Palo Alto, Calif. Last year, the company she founded, now called Mrs. Fields Famous Brands LLC and based in Salt Lake City, recorded sales of more than $450 million from 2,933 franchisees for her cookies and the other food businesses it has acquired, including Great American Cookie Company, TCBY, Pretzel Time and Pretzelmaker.
"I had no experience in business — just a cookie recipe and a dream," said Fields, who is now 48.
Her movie-star mom looks and warm disposition helped to make her company a news-media darling. For years, the morning news programs' appetite for Mrs. Fields seemed insatiable.
Finally, after somehow finding time to have five daughters while opening about 600 stores, Fields said "enough" in 2000. Retiring from the company, which she had already sold to a group of private investors in 1998, Fields settled in Memphis, Tenn., with her second husband, Michael D. Rose, chairman of Gaylord Entertainment, the hotel and theme park company.
"The hardest part of retiring, for me, is writing the word 'retired' on forms," Fields said.
She makes time for some of the private life she missed along the career trail: She shares custody of her two youngest daughters, ages 13 and 16, and has two stepchildren, both teenagers, too, living at home. "I'm so lucky to get to drive my kids to school and soccer," she said.
But she still has a public life, scheduling about 15 engagements a year as a speaker on the subjects of good service and product quality. She charges $15,000 an appearance, a fee that she calls "fair and affordable."
She's still dreaming about finding another recipe to take national, if she comes across it in her busy, everyday life.
"I found this chef who makes a wonderful lasagna, the best I've ever had, and he's bringing over enough for 13 guests I'm having at our home tonight," she said in a recent telephone interview.
That same evening, she arranged for another restaurant chef to deliver his special pecan pie topped with chocolate chips. Could Mrs. Fields Lasagna or Mrs. Fields Pies be next? "You never know," she said.