• December 16, 2002
• Vol. 58
• No. 25

Serious Dough

Sisters Bette Laplante and Diane Cuvelier Find the Recipe for Success in Bumpy Aluminum Cookie Sheets

Bette LaPlante never planned on launching an empire from her garage. Back in 1990 the former hairdresser just wanted to raise money for son Danny's cub scout group. When her husband, Brooks, 49, who owned an aluminum business, suggested that the boys craft cookie sheets, "I thought they would think it was sissy," she recalls. Instead the scouts loved it and sold 3,000 of the pans. They were made of textured aluminum, which bakes unusually evenly and without burning. "People said they were like the cookie sheets their grandmothers used," says LaPlante, 48. "We really hit on something."

And then some. Twelve years later LaPlante is CEO of Doughmakers, Inc., the Terre Haute, Ind., company she founded with her sister Diane Cuvelier, 43, an ex-waitress and single mother of two, in 1996. At first the pair hand-sanded the sheets' edges in the LaPlantes' garage ("we both got carpal tunnel," says Bette). A sanding machine helped, and by 2001 they had patented the pans' pebbled surface and were in such stores as Macy's, where the sheets sell for $17.99. This year the company made $3.5 million.

"These pans are no gimmick—they really bake well," says David Lebovitz, former pastry chef at Chez Panisse. For Diane, who was once on welfare, success couldn't be sweeter: She can afford to send daughter Emily, 17, to college. Says Diane: "I think she'll be studying business."

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