Nox Cookie Bar, a San Jose-based food manufacturer that delivers fresh cookies to your door, stumbled onto a new business opportunity during the pandemic when corporate clients started ordering care packages to express their gratitude to employees who are working from home.  

“This was clearly a case of customers telling us, ‘hey, there’s a business opportunity,’” said Nathan Pendleton, Owner, Nox Cookie Bar. Pendleton said he had an “early warning indicator” about two weeks prior to the announcement of shelter-in-place when his corporate catering business went to “zero” as tech industry clients started telling people to work from home.

Nox’s wholesale business also took a dive, but then something unexpected happened.

“What happened, which was super-surprising, is that our nighttime deliveries just took off,” said Pendleton.

The company quickly retooled by turning its operations upside down. Instead of using the nighttime shift to prepare for daytime orders, they started using the daytime shift to prepare for the nighttime surge.

Pendleton soon noticed another trend as major employers, like Samsung and Ernst & Young, started placing orders to have cookies delivered to employees who were working from home. These corporate “morale boosters” inspired Nox to formally launch its new Employee Recognition Program. With each order received Nox Cookie Bar will donate a box of 50 cookies to health and safety facilities in the community.   

Nox began working with SFMade’s partner organization, Manufacture:San Jose (MFG:SJ), in late 2018, when Pendleton and Michael Erickson, the director of MFG:SJ, met and started talking about the business.

“Mike and I have been on an interesting journey,” said Pendleton. “He actually caused me to think in a different way about how our business was run by separating how we approach the front end—the retail side—of the business and the manufacturing back end of the business. This allowed me to focus on optimizing manufacturing, which led to the launch of our wholesale business. Mike also introduced us to two other local suppliers, which allowed us to expand our offering beyond cookies and ice cream.”

Although Pendleton is taking a day-to-day approach to running the business during the pandemic, the Employee Recognition might be here to stay.

“Our sense is that companies will continue to rotate their workforce with many employees still working from home,” said Pendleton. “The Employee Recognition Program is a great way to recognize those employees when the employers lack the usual touchpoints. We think it has some legs.”

Visit Nox Cookie Bar’s website to learn more or to order your own “morale booster” of warm, delicious cookies.