SHERWOOD PARK, Alta. – The sweet smell of cookies baking in the oven greets visitors as they walk into Velma McKinney’s kitchen. The grandmother reaches into her stove and pulls out a piping hot batch of horse cookies.
Horse cookies?
More than one person thinks McKinney’s horse treats look good enough to eat.
“People have been fooled,” said McKinney.
On a good day, McKinney makes about 8,000 horse cookies in the camp kitchen in the yard of her central Alberta farm.
Using a melon ball scoop she drops dough onto cookie sheets and flattens the mix of grains, flax, molasses, water and oil into two-inch cookies. Soon the horse cookies are cooked, cooled, bagged and ready for sale.
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Like many new ventures, it was a fluke when McKinney stumbled onto her idea. Her son, Grant, has always used some kind of treat when training horses. McKinney looked around and found there was a gap in the equine pet market that she could fill with horse treats.
“It’s always been my dream to have a successful business,” said McKinney. After nine years of making styrofoam cups in Edmonton she was looking for a good home-based business.
McKinney and her partner started the business just over two years ago, but as the business grew their partnership ended. McKinney didn’t want a part-time business. Her plans include selling horse cookies across Canada, to the United States and just about anywhere else there are horses.
She also ended her agreement with a local marketing company to sell her cookies. After spending frustrating hours with her original marketing company, she phoned Grant Lovig of Company’s Coming cookbooks and asked how that business got started. Lovig told her there was no secret, just hard work and personally pushing your product.
” ‘You have to put your product in the van and head out’, ” he told her.
Now, McKinney cooks three days a week, packages one day and is on the road selling for the other.
She stops at feedmills, general stores and small towns throughout the province.
“You have to do it yourself. Nobody cares about your product like you do,” she said.
McKinney says she hears few refusals from businesses because of the novelty of horse cookies. But the selling doesn’t stop when the cookies are in the store. McKinney spends a lot of time on the phone cajoling owners to reorder cookies.
Since she has been selling the cookies on her own rather than through the marketing company, McKinney has been able to keep prices down and more businesses are reordering.
Cookies range from $2 to $10 a bag depending on the size of bag.
So far McKinney isn’t getting rich off her new venture.
“I’m paying all my bills. I’m not making any money, but it has paid its way.”
