How did you start Tiff’s Treats?
Leon: We were sophomores, and the idea came about because my now lovely wife here stood me up on a date. Tiffany: We are from Richardson. We were there for winter break our sophomore year, and yes, I stood him up on a date. … So I made a set of cookies and drove over to his dad’s house, and when I got there they were still warm. … I get back home, and he calls me and says, ‘Hey, when we get back to school we’re going to do this like a business. It’s going to be just like a pizza delivery [company], only with cookies.’
Leon, were you always entrepreneurial-minded?
Leon: My parents were, and so I thought that’s how everyone thought. And so I’d always be thinking of ideas, some terrible and some not so terrible. But really the impetus was, after my freshman year in college, I interned at a company in Dallas. … I was sitting there one day thinking, ‘Oh man, I don’t know if I can do this when I graduate.’
Do you have any advice for any future entrepreneurs who are busy at work or school?
Tiffany: Put your passion into the thing that you want to really be doing, and then you can spend your other hours doing the other thing. But it’s hard to split passions up one way or the other. We put all of our focus and all of our energy into Tiff’s Treats while we were still in college.
How did you build the Tiff’s Treats brand?
Tiffany: I think we did realize early on that people had an emotional connection to our company. I don’t know that’s something that we necessarily did, but it was just a family-based business; it was just Leon and I doing it with passion. But I also think our product lends to that; it’s a warm product. Ultimately, we just strive to do everything the best possible [way] that we can in terms of customer service and the product being consistent.
