Owners Tiffany and Leon Chen wanted to gift Amy with a year’s worth of cookies because of the impact she had on their business, and Amy in turn chose to pay it forward.
The founders Tiff’s Treats, a Texas bakery, have been in business for 22 years and this year they wanted to celebrate that milestone by finding their first customer: Amy. Owners Tiffany and Leon Chen wanted to gift Amy with a year’s worth of cookies because of the impact she had on their business.
“We've been talking about Amy for 22 years, cause it sticks in our mind. She was the very first customer. Without her calling, we might've closed up shop,” Tiffany Chen said.
Cookie lovers across the world wanted to help the couple on their mission, but Tiffany and Leon didn’t expect the endeavor to end up in giving deserving kids sweet treats.
“We’ve had so many people reaching out over email, through social media. Even my dad asked me if we had found Amy yet!” Leon told Inside Edition Digital.
But when the couple did find Amy, after a woman realized that the Amy the couple was talking about is her sister's best friend, it turned out Amy was living abroad. So, the couple's first-ever customer decided she wanted to donate her year’s worth of cookies to charity.
She chose a local non-profit called Foster Angels of Central Texas. The organization’s aim is to improve the lives of children in foster care. In 2020, Foster Angels helped 5,000 children, including more than 50 college students who got scholarship support. Those kids will now be getting a sweet care package.
“We will be starting to drop cookies every week to our students that are currently doing school from their dorms or apartments and so they'll be getting some warm cookies delivered to them,” said Tania Leksovar-Owens, the charity's executive director. “And we'll also work to deliver some of those cookies to some of the families that we work with that are fostering.”
Leon and Tiffany, who are in the process of writing their book about building their business from scratch, got emotional when they found out the first recipient of the sweet care package was a student at the University of Texas, Austin, because that’s where the pair started their business when they were just sophomores.
Amy is happy the couple has come this far.
“I’m really proud of them, their hard work and their entrepreneurship," she said. "I did not know my order inspired them in any way to keep going, I wish them all the best luck."
RELATED STORIES
