Cookie Monsters

R. W. Frookies Inc. is betting its all-natural product can grab shelf space now occupied by such classics as Oreo, Fig Newtons, and Mallomars

This is just a suggestion, but if your're under 30 you might want to skip ahead to the 11th paragraph. It is there that the story of Richard S. Worth, and his plan for "reinventing" the $4-billion cookie industry, begins in earnest.

At that point we'll show you how his creation, the Frookie, came about; why he thinks a cookie sweetened with fruit juice, not sugar, will forever humble the likes of Nabisco Brands (maker of Oreo Cookies and Fig Newtons), Keebler (E. L. Fudge and Chips Deluxe), and Procter & Gamble (Duncan Hines cookies); and explain how a wealthy suburban kid became a farmer, then a jam maker, then ended up in the cookie business.

But before we can do that, we have to talk a little bit about THE SIXTIES. (When Worth says it, it comes out like that, all capital letters.)

Back in THE SIXTIES, Worth, scion of the Worth clothing store family, was a psychology major at New York's Hobart College and doing quite well, thank you. He liked school. He graduated near the top of his class, and by the standards of the times (tune in, turn on, drop out; don't trust anyone over 30; etc.) he was almost normal.

Almost. The problem was music. Like most people his age, Worth used the local rock-and-roll station to provide the soundtrack for his life. That was fine. After all, back then radio celebrated youth. And perhaps nothing was more celebrated than Woodstock, the 1969 rock concert that helped define a generation. Almost anywhere you went on the Hobart campus, you could hear the opening lines of THE SONG written to canonize THE EVENT.

I came upon a child of God, he was walking along the road

And I asked him, "Where you going," and this he told me

He said, "I'm going down to Yasgur's farm

I am going to join in a rock 'n' roll band

I am going to camp out on the land

I am going to try to get my soul free."

Now, most psych majors listened to "Woodstock" -- and the reference to Yasgur's farm, where the concert took place -- and said things like "neat" and "groovy." Then they went back to running rats through mazes. "Woodstock" was a very nice song written by Joni Mitchell, but that's all it was: a song.

Not to Worth, though. To him, "Woodstock" was a rallying cry. I mean, Worth asked at the time, how could you listen to the chorus ("We are stardust/We are golden/And we got to get ourselves back to the garden") and not understand that we had to return to a simpler life.

If you remember the times, people used to say stuff like that a lot, and some even acted on it. So only a few eyebrows were raised when Rich Worth, from Boston's posh Brookline suburb, the same little Richie Worth who had never even changed a flat tire, told friends he was going to Canada to buy a farm and live off the land.

And so he did. Oh, along the way there were some adventures, like the time a friend left him to look at an abandoned farm, then drove away, not to return for five days. There were the 12-hour days he spent unloading tuna boats to earn money to buy coffee and tea -- things he couldn't produce on the farm. And then there was the tree that fell on him before he learned the right way to cut them down. But for seven years, Rich Worth did live off the land. Joni Mitchell, if not Worth's parents, would have been proud.

With that, let's end the flashback and welcome back the under-30 set. (You'll recognize them. They're the ones who think Woodstock is Snoopy's fluffy yellow friend.)

There was Richard Worth, blueberry farmer, living off the land, and things were fine until January 27, 1978, the day Jonas Worth was born. As he held his new son, Worth had an amazing insight: Richie Worth was now a grown-up.

"I wasn't going to leave my son a farm that produced $3,500 a year," Worth recalls thinking. "On that day, both Jonas and Sorrell Ridge were born."

But while everyone knew what Jonas would grow up to be -- healthy, smart, handsome -- nobody knew what Sorrell Ridge would become. Named after the place Worth farmed, it would be a company, of course. But selling what?

Blueberries? Everybody did that. Blueberry pies? Boring. What else can do you with blueberries? Make jam, maybe?

Yeah. Jam.

So Rich and his then-wife, Suzanne, started making jams. But people who "have to get back to the garden" can't make traditional jams filled with sugar, corn sweeteners, citric acid, and sodium citrate. The Worths created a fruit-only wild blueberry conserve. Fruit-only peach and raspberry followed. Local supermarketers liked them. So did distributors, and within two years Worth was running a $1-million company. Sales quickly hit $2 million, then $3 million. Four years later, after listening to some major companies explain the benefits that would come from national distribution and bulk buying, Worth sold to Allied Old English Inc. for a bunch of cash and 3% of future sales.

He stayed until 1985, but without management control. It just wasn't fun anymore. So while still with Allied Old, Worth started looking for something else to do. He didn't have to look very far. Opportunity could be found in the next supermarket aisle.

During the time he was building up Sorrell Ridge, "all natural" had moved from the counterculture into the mainstream. As Worth meandered through grocery aisles in the summer of 1983, he found all-natural cereals, ice creams, hot dogs -- even dog food. In fact, the cookie section was the only place without an alternative to chemical- or preservative-filled products.

"It was," he says, "the classic opportunity, and one made for me. If I could sell all-natural jams, I could sell all-natural cookies." Worth, now 39, has never had a problem with self-confidence.