Fancy Fortune Cookies^®…from one crummy cookie to millions of great ones

gourmet lemon flavored fortune cookies

All it took was one man on a cookie quest—okay, an obsession

My name is Mike Fry—I’m a fortune cookie fanatic and flavoring pioneer, and that one idea forever changed my life.

(Check out the first newspaper article about my original concept.) As it turned out, I did turn the fortune cookie business upside down. You see, as a former Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey clown, I understood the value of serving up fun to my customers. And at that time I had my own nationally syndicated children’s TV show, Happy The Hobo (pictured below) so I also knew how well people respond to surprises and vivid colors. With that background, I guess I was destined to invent colored, flavored fortune cookies.

The rest is 22 years of fortune cookie history, as I opened Fancy Fortune Cookies in 1988 and continued to develop more unique flavors and perfect all aspects of the complex fortune cookie process. In 1990 I walked away from my TV show, which had been airing for eight years on the Fox Network in 209 cities. I had high ratings and there was a two-year wait for tickets to my 90-minute daily live show. It was a truly a performer's dream job, so I didn’t leave it until I was sure I was onto something even more exciting and rewarding.

For a guy from Indiana with no special training in the food industry, I was an unlikely candidate to become the first non-Asian person ever to bake and manufacture fortune cookies. My goal is to literally make the best-tasting, best-looking and most memorable fortune cookies on the planet—and I spare no expense in my chosen obsession!

You really can taste our quality in every crunchy bite. Even though we sell all our cookies at the same price regardless of flavor, each one does have a dramatically different recipe, requiring widely varying, expensive ingredients. Therefore the cost to actually produce a particular flavored cookie can be five to seven times more than to bake a traditional vanilla fortune cookie (which even for us means using a much higher grade of vanilla than you’d find in a restaurant cookie). For us, it’s all about creating the very best taste experience for our valued customers.

The fortune cookie innovations just keep coming

From the very beginning I knew another way my cookies would stand out was by using only the very best fresh, natural ingredients I could find. We don’t use strange chemical compounds or additives in our products, and our cookies are baked fresh—not stored for years in some warehouse in Shanghai. That’s why we import our chocolate from Belgium.
All of our fortune cookies can be ordered dipped and or drizzled with white or milk chocolate, as well as with that 21st century health food, dark chocolate. Yes, we refined that process, too, and continue to innovate new styles of applying chocolate. And unlike our competitors’ cookies, there are no waxy compounds in our chocolate, just pure, silky delight.
 
From our very small and humble beginning, we've gone from  inventing the very first gourmet fortune cookies (strawberry, lemon, orange, blueberry and mint) to creating a whole fun menu of flavors in brilliant colors that you can customize with your own messages or promotions inside. Since 1988 we've developed 25 delicious, turbo-charged flavors happily sold to individuals, companies and restaurants across the U.S. and beyond. Our flavor development and taste testing process is exhaustive, and we now offer such unusual ones as cappuccino, green apple and pumpkin pie—all guaranteed to be the best fortune cookies you ever tasted.

Along the way we also added the giant fortune cookie, which weighs in at over a pound and sports a foot-long fortune inside. Each 5” x 7” cookie is dipped in your choice of chocolate, then decorated with colorful candy sprinkles for an edible gift that won’t be forgotten.

Hey, we even invented our own fortune cookie machine, which took five years to develop, and that ensures that we can make the very best possible, consistent cookies on earth.
We use 21st century technology combined with old-fashioned hard work and a serious dedication to quality. I will not sacrifice quality or taste just to make a few extra cents per cookie. While the old notion of a fortune cookie was as a free throwaway item, I was determined to create a delicious dessert that also happened to contain a fortune.

Now for some shameless self-promotion—my entrepreneurial exploits have been documented by two well-known marketing experts. Bestselling author Mark Victor Hansen (Chicken Soup for the Soul series) featured my story as a novelty and toy inventor. My patented invention The Always Together Bear was featured in Hansen's One Minute Millionaire. Seth Godin, author of Unleashing the Idea Virus and many other groundbreaking books, shared my tale of success in the online edition of his book, Purple Cow. Hey, it’s always nice when other people notice your hard work.

The Sweet Life In A Fortune Cookie Factory

Once my Willy Wonka fantasy came true and we expanded to a full-fledged commercial bakery operation, it became my mission to continue to offer only the very best product possible, along with world-class customer service. We’ve been blessed to help clients as diverse as FedEx and Mr. Rogers, Magic Johnson and Jackie Chan, Ozzy Osbourne and Oprah herself. Another reflection of our quality product is that high end hotels in Las Vegas like the Venetian and the Bellagio use our cookies for their special promotions, and the exclusive W Hotels place our fortune cookies on their pillows as part of their turndown service. We have yet to get an order too big. In the late ‘90s we shipped 1.1 million customized fortune cookies to an American pharmaceutical company for a special promotion. More recently we sent 750,000 assorted flavored cookies all the way to France for resale. We ran shifts around the clock, and we had a blast working with that client. (Hop over here to read some of our many testimonials from thrilled customers.)

 
Erin and Ella in front of our huge fortune cookie order headed to France

We can also handle small orders with very special needs. We’re the only fortune cookie company that works so closely with clients that a Today Show producer in New York called us in Indiana when no one on the East Coast could do a same-day delivery to correct his oversight. He needed cookies the next morning for a Chinese New Year segment. The cost of the cookies: $35.00; cost of Fed Ex same-day shipping: $240.00. We had the producer’s order ready for a 2:00 p.m. pickup, and they were delivered to him later that day, practically still warm! No one on earth can turn around fortune cookie orders like we do.

Fancy Fortune Cookies^® Is A Family Operation

Our company has continued to grow and develop over the years. While we’re continually adding new products and innovative flavors to our fortune cookie line, Fancy Fortune Cookies

has also become family owned and operated. Starting with the addition of my wife, Erin, and a few years later our baby Ella. From time to time you may hear Ella offering her opinion in the background, because we run a family friendly workplace.
Ella has been reporting to “work” since the age of three months, and our merry team of a dozen people thinks of her as their mascot. The family connections don’t stop there, either. Our Office Manager, Michelle, is so happy working here that she’s brought along her sister, son and daughter. Imagine the fun of hanging out with your mom in a cookie factory—which adds a lot of sparkle to Bring Your Daughter To Work Day. Of course, for now, that’s every day for us. Ella gets one cookie a day, and her current favorite is the tart and tasty purple delight, black raspberry. Mmmmm, good choice, Ella! As you can see, she’s become quite the box inspector and shipping expert.

We pride ourselves in providing solid jobs for American families—all of our fortune cookies are lovingly hand made in our Indianapolis, Indiana bakery—we don’t outsource any aspect of our business. Both Erin and I can be found working and supervising operations daily. In fact, if you call the bakery at 888-776-6611 there’s a good chance either Erin or I will answer the phone. And if we don’t, we’re usually available to speak with you at any time.
So give us a call, and let us show you how colorful and flavorful a fortune cookie can really be.

Contact Fancy Fortune Cookies

By Mail: 6247 Coffman Rd.Indianapolis, IN 46268
By Phone: 888-776-6611 or 317-299-8900
By Fax: 317-298-3690
By Email: erin@fancyfortunecookies.com