I was doing all the baking for Christmas and family birthdays at the early age of 9 and I love doing it ever since - cookies, cakes, pies, gingerbread, you name it. 

The idea to make a business out of my passion came to me almost overnight: Being a single mom of two wonderful kids, living in New York City takes its toll especially on the financial situation. Making some extra $$ and that all by doing what I really love to do, seemed like a good way to go. To be sure, New Yorkers love their cookies - but would they also fall for my Austrian butter cookies? I thought I would never know if I would not give it a try. So I started baking three of my favorite cookies: Linzer tarts, Vanilla crescents and Almond hearts - and gave them out to friends and clients of mine. You can’t imagine how thrilled I was to find out that they all loved them as much as I did!

My sister Miki and I then started to think of a name for the business. We were playing around with a few ideas - the funniest of them was “Guglhupf” - the name of an Austrian bundt cake - but it seemed too difficult to pronounce (though very funny). Then my sister asked me how I liked “Servus Cookies” and I instantly loved it! Servus (pronounced: “servousse” ) is an informal greeting in Austria meaning “hello” and "bye" and we always greet each other this way when talking on the phone. On top of it it also works in English - being close enough phonetically to “serve us”. SERVUS COOKIES was born!

I started baking in May 2011 with my tiny home stove and sold at first only at private events and small local craft fairs.

The cookie business really took off around Christmas time when most of my clients and friends either bought bigger quantities for themselves or endorsed my cookies for their business clients as Christmas gifts. I baked 3,700 cookies in 2 months and my sister and her husband helped me to pack them - it was an exciting, great and exhausting experience! 

As I also work in another job I do not have the time to push the business as much as I would like to but amazingly it works well to take it a bit slower. So my next step will lead me to the development of new delicious treats and eventually to open my own Austrian coffee shop!