Debbi Fields

Palo Alto, August 1977: a shop called Mrs. Fields' Chocolate Chippery opened and sold almost nothing until the owner carried a tray into the street and gave the cookies away. Debbi Fields, born Debra Jane Sivyer in Oakland in 1956, was twenty years old with two years of community college behind her, and had earlier been a ball girl for the Oakland Athletics. The chain grew to hundreds of American outlets and dozens more abroad. She began franchising in 1990, sold control to an investment group in the early 1990s, and stayed on as the brand's public face. That is the footing Mrs. Fields Cookie Book stands on: a hundred recipes issued under a name that now belongs to a company she does not own.