Hi there, and welcome to my cube! My name is Kari and I am the Fairytale Brownies Marketing Coordinator, which around here means I do a little bit of everything. My main duties are planning and coordinating marketing efforts, especially catalogs, e-mail specials, Web promotions and our Twitter profile (@ftbrownies).
Most of what I do is behind-the-scenes marketing strategy, but I get to be involved in our brownie photo shoots, new product development of gourmet brownie gifts and other fun outings, too. I'll mostly blog about whatever I'm working on and events I've attended, but you might see me talk about some other things as well.
That's all for now, but I look forward to blogging more soon!
I know we've posted about our soon-to-be-launched Fairytale Cookies before, but I have to share some of the feedback we've gotten from early tasters. These new cookies come in two flavors (Double Chocolate and Caramel Pecan), and come in the same gift packaging as our gourmet brownies, so you can have your cookies delivered the same way you send brownies.
A bunch of our local Phoenix friends tasted the new cookies last week at Buzzcation, and have been tweeting their reviews ever since. Thanks for all the kind words, everyone!
@Littlebitofmoni - I am finally eating my @ftbrownies Double Chocolate cookie from #buzzcation, and it is muy delicioso!!! Perfectly sweetened, great texture..
@JRFox10 - holy cow that chocolate cookie you gave out at #buzzcation w/ @districtkitchen was one of the greatest treats eva!!
@erinjohnston - I can't even believe how good this cookie is. Wow.
@lafinguy - Just have to say, I had @ftbrownies double chocolate cookies with my coffee this morning and they were FABULOUS! (my kinda coffee cake)
@paulvalach - mmm mmm mm JUST opened a caramel pecan cookie from you,, WOW moist and deeee...lish...
@CordMoorhead - I do have to say, those are some very tasty cookies @ftbrownies Looking forward to seeing them in the next catalog.
@DankaMarketing - umm yeah. i MAY have killed the entire chocolate cookie before i got out of the parking garage.
My husband and I have had a contractor in our house the last couple of weeks remodeling our master bathroom. I am ecstatic that he is almost done with the renovation, and want to give him a little extra treat to thank him for his hard work. Of course this means he will be getting a some deliciously fudgy Fairytale Brownies! In my experience, gourmet brownies make a very memorable thank you gift, and I want him to remember us. We have another bathroom we'd like to freshen up a bit in the next few months, so I think a delicious brownie gift will help remind him how much he enjoyed working for us. :)
I've mentioned before that I volunteer for the American Cancer Society on the Phoenix DetermiNation program in my free time. I tend to bring our fudgy chocolate brownies for our volunteers, runners and walkers to enjoy at our meetings and events. As a result, we have discovered that gourmet Fairytale Brownies make a great pre or post-run snack. Who knew Belgian chocolate brownies could be the secret to a great run?! It turns out the nutritional content of a Fairytale Sprite snack-size brownie is pretty similar to most energy/protein bars on the market, and our all-natural ingredients provide some of the best fuel available. So next time you need a snack before you head out to run, bike, swim or whatever workout you prefer, try one of these fudgy chocolate brownies and see if it works for you!
I am very excited this week, because Thursday morning I am heading out of the Phoenix heat to some (hopefully) cooler temperatures on the Connecticut coast to spend a week with my parents and my sister's family, including the two most adorable nieces in the world (I may be biased, but they're pretty stinking cute). If there's one thing I've learned about being a cool aunt, it's to always have some fudgy Fairytale Brownies when I visit! I'm taking a Magic Morsel Dozen for the girls so they have their very own bite-sized gourmet brownies to devour. Since my dad just turned 60, I decided I should take him a Happy Birthday brownie gift as well. I think I'll take the Birthday Sprite 24 so he has plenty for himself and to share with the rest of the adults, who are always very happy when I send brownies for the holidays.
We are down to the wire with our Fall and Holiday Fairytale Brownies catalogs this week! We've been working hard for months, and will be sending the files for our gourmet brownie gifts catalog to the printer on Friday. The photo on the left is a stack of all the edits we made just in the last week! All this hard work can make us a little crazy, but it is always worth it in the end to see the mouthwatering catalogs full of our fudgy brownies and cookies that will be on their way to you soon! We've made some changes this year, and we hope you love these catalogs as much as we do. And if you aren't on our mailing list yet, fill out this form to ensure you'll have a catalog when you want to send brownies or have cookies delivered to your friends and loved ones this fall!
This weekend, one of my best friends from college is coming to visit, and I am really excited. We haven't seen each other since December (and only for breakfast), so it's going to be a fun weekend, even if it is 105 degrees! She has always loved Fairytale Brownies and gets really excited whenever I send brownies to her back in Indiana. So, when she gets here, I'm going to thank her for coming with a gourmet brownie gift that she can take home with her. I find that a box of the best brownies around can make anyone feel right at home wherever they are!
Erin, David and I are back at Rick Gayle Studio taking photos for our holiday gourmet brownie gift catalogs, and I thought I would share a few behind-the-scenes photos. We've been taking pictures of new towers and tins that will be full of fudgy brownies for the holidays, and they all look delicious. Today is the first day we've taken photos of our new Fairytale Cookies, and we are excited to offer customers the opportunity of getting cookies delivered along with our brownies. They are looking and tasting good!
Here's Erin with a plate of cosmetic sponges that our food stylist, Kim, uses to prop up our brownies.
And here I am tying ribbon around our monstrous new 6-box Fairytale Tower. It's 20 inches tall, and full of Fairytale Brownies and Cookies and other goodies!
And here's Kim working on our new Christmas Tower set.
For the past couple of years, I have been an American Cancer Society volunteer for the Phoenix DetermiNation program. This program allows people to train for and participate in endurance events like marathons and half-marathons as part of a team that raises funds to help the ACS fight cancer. Since I've been part of the program, we have provided Belgian chocolate Fairytale Brownies for our volunteers at meetings and for our runners and walkers after each race. The fudgy gourmet brownies are always a hit with both groups, especially after finishing a 13.1 or 26.2 mile race. Everyone always says they are the best brownies they've ever had, and it seems that the all-natural ingredients are a great way for our athletes to replenish some of the calories they've spent in a most delicious way!
As I mentioned last week, we had a summer kickoff party here at Fairytale Brownies last Wednesday. All 33 of us took a break from baking gourmet brownies, packing and shipping brownie gifts and figuring out what makes people want to buy brownies for a couple hours of fun in the sun. David put together a fun video of the party, and I thought it would be fun to give you a little behind-the-scenes peek at our party at the Fairytale Bakery. You might notice that we also got to sample some of our forthcoming Fairytale Cookies. They are coming right along, and each batch is more delicious than the last. I can't wait to add them to our food gift product line this fall!
Every month at Fairytale Brownies, we have an end-of-month lunch and staff meeting. Today, we're kicking off summer with a party! Everyone is going to take a little break from baking and shipping the world's best brownies to have a little fun. Our co-founder David is manning the grills, we're having a dessert challenge among the team members, and there will be fun and games for all.
Here's some of what's going on right now at the gourmet brownie bakery to get ready: The break room getting ready for the dessert challenge. We have high dessert standards, considering we make delicious fudge brownies every day, so it should be yummy!
And outside, we're getting ready for cornhole (or bags, but I'm from the Midwest, and we call it cornhole) and plasma car races:
What's a plasma car, you ask? This! It's going to be hilarious. Stay tuned for pictures of the actual Fairytale Brownies party, as I'm sure someone will blog about it after.
Erin and I are spending this week at a gourmet brownie photo shoot to prepare our brownie gifts catalog for the fall and winter of 2010. We've been working the team at Rick Gayle Studio for several years, and we love the work they do for us. And they sure know how to have a good time doing it! :) We're shooting a little differently than we have in the past to freshen up the catalog, so I thought I'd give you a little behind-the-scenes peek at how we shoot our fudgy brownies in the photo studio.
Here's a wide shot of the whole studio:
Jill in the background finding and prepping the best brownies of the bunch while Kim and I look at cut Fairytale Truffles (chocolate-covered brownies) to choose which one to feature:
Rick fine tuning the layout of a shot of a Christmas brownie gift:
And finally, a shot-in-progress of the pure, premium ingredients that make Fairytale Brownies the best mail order brownies around:
Last night, my husband, Nick, and I drove down to Tucson to see the a capella group Straight No Chaser perform as part of our anniversary celebration (3 years today!). It was extra special for us, as Ryan, one of the ten members of the group, is an old friend and fraternity brother of Nick's. We love music, so we were excited to hear them sing, but also to get to see Ryan for the first time in years. So, we took some fudgy chocolate brownies for him to share with the guys as they continue their tour. The show was amazing, and we got lots of comments about our box of gourmet brownies as we made our way down the meet and greet line after. We got a message this morning saying that the Fairytale Sprite 48 we took was the best gift we could have given 10 guys who are living on a tour bus for months.
Here's a picture of Ryan (on the right) and Nick right after we handed over the brownies.
Thanks SNC for a great concert, and I hope you're enjoying the brownies!
Here's a glimpse at a corner of my desk right now. As you might guess, I've been playing with gourmet brownies and our still-in-development cookies to decide how to pack several gourmet brownie gifts we're working on for the fall. Every gift starts with a concept, then as we get closer to completing the gift's contents, we test different ways to pack the contents inside the box so that everything stays intact when we ship brownies to be delivered to you and your gift recipients. We got some preliminary Fairytale Cookies today, so I spent some time putting them into boxes with our fudge brownies and, to put it simply, shaking up the box to see what happens. Soon we will test ship new brownie gifts to really see how they will hold up in transit. We spend a lot of time adjusting things until we are satisfied that all of the mail order brownies and cookies we send will arrive as perfect as they were when we packed the box, so you and your loved ones get the best brownies delivered!
Our graphic designer, Erin, and I are deeply entrenched in the process of creating our gourmet Belgian chocolate brownie gifts catalog for the upcoming holiday season. I know, most of you won't even think about ordering brownies for the holidays for at least another six or seven months, but we have a gourmet brownie photo shoot in two short weeks!
Erin is working on a new layout for the catalogs beginning in September that I think you will all love. It's still in progress, but it is beautiful, and I think will make our fudgy brownies look even more decadent. Meanwhile, I'm working on the final new product and photo shoot details so we can have the best selection of brownie gifts available when you are ready to send brownies to your friends, loved ones, colleagues and clients this fall. I can't wait to show you a behind-the-scenes look at the photo shoot, so keep your eyes peeled in a couple of weeks for that!
Thanks to everyone who participated in my little "Unwrapped" contest this week. And thanks for taking a few minutes to learn about how Fairytale Brownies makes the best brownies in the world!
The question I asked was this: who originated our delicious fudge brownie recipe, and what is his or her name? The correct answer is Fairytale Brownies co-founder David's mom orginated the chocolate brownie recipe, and her name is Nancy Kravetz.
So now for the winners. Congratulations to Amanda, Alka and Rachael B for being randomly selected from the correct answers! You have a Fairytale Sprite Dozen coming your way. Just check your email for a message from me requesting your mailing address, and I'll get your fudgy chocolate brownies delivered ASAP!
People are always surprised to hear members of the Fairytale Brownies marketing team talking about Christmas all year round. You would think we get a break from it, but truth be told, we're constantly thinking and talking about what kinds of gourmet brownie gifts our customers will be looking for come December. Right now, Erin is working on new bands for our Christmas and Holiday fudge brownie gift boxes. To the right, you can see her Pantone swatches that she is using to choose the color palette for each band.
Here is a sneak peek of Erin working on the beginnings of the new Christmas band design. It's coming along! She's also been hard at work on the design for the towers I talked about last week, but I don't want to give too much away, so I'm not going to show you. But I will say that these brownie towers are going to be gorgeous!
Today, I'm working on some gourmet brownie gift towers we're going to debut in our Fall 2010 catalogs, and I wanted to give you a behind-the-scenes look at a new product in development. We've packed these white sample boxes full of delicious fudge brownies, cookies (can you spot them?), coffee, cocoa and cashews to see what fits in the towers.
Next, we'll analyze the cost of each gourmet brownie flavor that we hope to include, so we can make sure the gifts fit into the right price range for our customers who order brownies in these kinds of gifts.
On the design front, our graphic designer Erin is working on how the boxes should look so that we create the most enchanting gift we can. There will be plenty of our signature Fairytale purple and brown in one set of towers, but a couple of others will be designed as part of our Christmas and Holiday gift collections.
I'm very excited to tell you that Fairytale Brownies is again participating in the Phoenix Twestival this Thursday at Martini Ranch in Scottsdale, AZ. This second annual global event is designed to bring local Twitter users together to meet each other in person while raising awareness and funds for a worthy cause. This year's charity is Concern, a non-governmental, international, humanitarian organization dedicated to the reduction of suffering and working towards the ultimate elimination of poverty.
Alyssa and I will be there Thursday at 7:00 p.m., sampling our delicious gourmet fudge brownies for all of the Twestival attendees. Fairytale Brownies' mission has always been to spread joy with our gourmet chocolate brownies, and we see this as just one more way to do that.
If you're in the Phoenix area, come on out to Martini Ranch on Thursday and see what it's all about. If you're not in Phoenix, check the main Twestival website to see if there is an event in your city.
And while I'm talking about Twitter, if you tweet and haven't found us yet, follow @ftbrownies. I'd love to tweet with you! :)
Most people don't think much about the December holidays until at least Thanksgiving, or even until December actually rolls around. Not so here at Fairytale Brownies. We started talking about our 2010 Holiday product line and catalogs in January. It's a little overwhelming at times, but we constantly think about what our customers will want when they order brownies for the holidays.
This is a big part of my job as our marketing coordinator. We have to think about which fudge brownies (and now cookies!) our customers will love as well as what kinds of packaging you look for when you buy brownie gifts.
We've been talking about a lot of ideas for the last couple of months, and I'm curious what you think. Share your ideas for us in the comments section below, no matter how crazy you think they might be. If we decide to use your idea, I'll send you a thank you brownie gift to show our appreciation for your help.
Put your thinking caps on and tell us what you want!
Hi there, and welcome to my cube! My name is Kari and I am the Fairytale Brownies Marketing Coordinator, which around here means I do a little bit of everything. My main duties are planning and coordinating marketing efforts, especially catalogs, e-mail specials, Web promotions and our Twitter profile (@ftbrownies). 
I've mentioned before that I volunteer for the 
I am very excited this week, because Thursday morning I am heading out of the Phoenix heat to some (hopefully) cooler temperatures on the Connecticut coast to spend a week with my parents and my sister's family, including the two most adorable nieces in the world (I may be biased, but they're pretty stinking cute). If there's one thing I've learned about being a cool aunt, it's to always have some fudgy 
We are down to the wire with our Fall and Holiday 
This weekend, one of my best friends from college is coming to visit, and I am really excited. We haven't seen each other since December (and only for breakfast), so it's going to be a fun weekend, even if it is 105 degrees! She has always loved 
Thanks to everyone who participated in my little 
People are always surprised to hear members of the 
Here is a sneak peek of Erin working on the beginnings of the new Christmas band design. It's coming along! She's also been hard at work on the design for the towers I talked about last week, but I don't want to give too much away, so I'm not going to show you. But I will say that these brownie towers are going to be gorgeous! 
Whew! We've had a very busy start to 2010 here at 
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