From $1,900 to $3M — Wicked Whoopie's growth is definitely 'wicked'
Photo / Tim Greenway
The variety of whoopie pies offered at Wicked Whoopie's new store in downtown Freeport boggles the mind.
Photo / Tim Greenway
Wicked Whoopie founder and owner Amy Bouchard in the new store in downtown Freeport.
Wicked Whoopies has turned the phrase “big whoop” on its head. In the last 10 of the 22 years since Isamax Snacks president, Amy Bouchard, began baking whoopie pies at home to sell locally, the impulse snack has, “for reasons nobody can pinpoint, broken into the national consciousness,” the New York Times wrote in 2009.
In 2011, the whoopie pie became Maine's official state treat, while the Legislature dubbed blueberry pie the official state dessert. Whoopie pies are now baked and sold in gourmet flavors, multiple shapes and sizes, from coast to coast. They've come a long way from their humble roots in Pennsylvania Dutch country and their migration to Maine in the 1930s.
Bouchard, 49, is arguably the vanguard of the home-to-commercial Maine kitchen for this specialty food product. She has seen business grow from $1,900 her first year to $3 million in 2015. On June 1, she opened a new retail store at 100 Main St, Freeport, opposite the L.L.Bean flagship store, and a few blocks from her location of eight years.
“We were doing well, but had outgrown that space about three years ago,” she says. “Now tour buses stop at our front door, and we're catching walkers that we weren't catching before.”
The new and bigger space has a candy store-coffee shop feel with a South Beach color scheme, tables and chairs, and an array of individually bagged goodies available in 20 of her 50 flavors daily. Whoop-dee-doos, whoopie pies dipped in chocolate that Bouchard calls “Ring Dings on steroids,” tempt from baskets decorating the center counter. As visitors sit, snack and sip fresh milk from Westbrook's Smiling Hill Farm or a hot cup of Kingfield-roasted Carrabassett Coffee. A seven-foot whoopie pie tower made by an Orlando, Fla., movie set designer serves as whimsical mascot.
Wicked Whoopies' brand and evocative ambience seem to fit Freeport's retail mix.
“We've more than doubled the amount of Maine specialty food producers here to 15 over the last 10 years,” says Keith McBride, executive director of the Freeport Economic Development Corp.
“Cheap deals can be found online. Now people are flocking to Freeport for the full range of outdoor activities, in-store experiences and the tasting rooms of Maine-made specialty foods and beverages.”
It's working. In Bouchard's new location's opening week, she doubled her previous store's weekly sales.
Bouchard was in her late 20s and working at Bath Iron Works when her daughter was born. Looking for ways stay at home and still make money, her brother urged her to sell the whoopie pies she'd been making for friends and family since junior high.
“I thought it was a crazy idea,” she says, “but, at the same time, I got excited, and started playing around with my grandmother's recipe.”
She got a license to sell out of her home, and opened the phone book to find her first store, College Carry Out in Augusta.
“When the owner says 'Sure, bring them over,' I thought I'd made it,” Bouchard says. “I had my baby in one arm and whoopie pies in a basket on the other.”
What she didn't have was a receipt book or even know what one was.
“The owner was so kind, and showed me how to write out a receipt,” she says.
By the time she got home, all her whoopee pies had sold.
“I made $12 and was on Cloud 9,” she says. Then she started thinking about selling ten dozen a week.
With $24,000 in sales her second year, she outgrew her home kitchen, and had to decide to either completely stop or move to a commercial space. A loan from the Small Business Administration made possible a move to a 1,800-square-foot bakery in Richmond. Eventually she moved to her current 18,000-square-foot facility in Gardiner. She also has a retail store in Farmingdale, buying the building in October. In 2013, the SBA recognized her as a successful woman-owned business.
Bouchard has 30 full-time employees and oversees production of 10,000 whoopie pies a day. In peak season, when production can increase to 12,000, her full-time crew works overtime. She doesn't believe in seasonal help.
“I want to take care of them throughout the year,” she says, which fits her comment that “You can't be more Maine than me.”
Wholesale is the mainstay of her business. She works with Associated Grocers of New England and ships product to Hannaford for distribution throughout New England and New York.
Gardiner-based Pine State Convenience is one of her biggest distributors, getting Wicked Whoopies into 500 convenience stores in Maine and a total network of seven states. It began in 1995, when Pine State Trading Co. Managing Partner Gena Canning reached out to Bouchard. Canning says sales were $16,000 the first year of working together and $200,000 in 2015.
“Amy was a good fit and grew with us,” Canning says. “She is her brand and brings all her enthusiasm and her family to every trade show. She is part of the community and works so hard.”
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