How did the Kerry cookies crumble?
By Sam Dealey
To hear Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) tell it, his brief foray into the cookie business in the late 1970s gives him a leg up on the concerns of small-business owners. Earlier this month, the Democratic presidential candidate introduced his small-business program with vignettes from his own cookie-making experience.
Yet all that experience kind of, well, crumbles, in the mind of David Liederman, another cookie entrepreneur. Liederman, the founder of the Davids Cookies chain, claims Kerry ripped off the idea from him.
The bottom line is he just stole it from me, said Liederman, now a restaurateur and real estate developer in the New York City suburbs.
The Kerry campaign sharply dismissed Liedermans charge.
Clearly, the guy who started Davids Cookies didnt invent cookies, said spokesman David DiMartino. John Kerry absolutely denies this charge.
Kerrys former venture serves as the backdrop for a number of campaign publicity measures designed to woo voters. In a Vogue magazine profile last year featuring the presidential candidate in surfing wear, Kerry discussed the cookie business at some length.
After dinner one night in Boston, Kerry said, he and a friend had a hankering for cookies. Their search took them to Faneuil Hall. There was no cookie store to be found, but there was an empty retail space. An idea was born, and a store soon followed. The pair named their shop, Kilvert & Forbes Ltd., after their mothers maiden names, and eventually sold their interest when Kerrys political career intervened.
It was a late-night inspiration, Kerry told Vogue. I had always had this entrepreneurial piece of me, and I saw it as a great business opportunity. And this experience, Kerry continued, stood me in great stead on the [Senate] Small Business Committee.
However, Liederman recalls a different version of how Kerrys cookie venture crumbled.
Some guy who called me up was John Kerry, in 79 or 80, Liederman recalled. He said he wanted to come down and talk to me about franchising. He came to the office and said he had an incredible space in Boston, which was Faneuil Hall. He said he needed some plans and some layouts and all sorts of things to get the approval of the landlord.
So I gave him the layout, the package, and he went back and I didnt hear from him for six or seven months.
Then one day Liederman got a call from someone who said theyd seen one of his stores in Faneuil Hall. Not having a store in Boston, Liederman decided to have a look for himself.
It was a direct, 100-percent knock off of Davids Cookies, said Liederman, from the appliances to the shops design to the cookies themselves. If you had walked into a Davids Cookies store in Manhattan at the same time he opened Johns Cookies in Boston, you couldnt tell the difference.
In his 1989 autobiography Running Through Walls, where the charge first appeared, Liederman wrote that he challenged Kerry on the origin of his business. I told him he had stolen my idea, and he replied: Youre absolutely right. I am a politician; I shouldnt be in the cookie business, so let me sell you my store, Liederman wrote.
Liederman never bought the store, he said, because Kerry was operating it in violation of his lease. He was supposed to be selling jams and jellies, not cookies, he wrote.
DiMartino denied the exchange took place. John Kerry does not recall having the conversation Mr. Liederman discusses in his book, he said. The facts included in Mr. Liedermans complaint dont match reality.
Still, if he wants it, Kerry hasnt quite lost Liedermans vote.
Id support anybody that wasnt Bush, he said. If Kerry got the nomination, Id absolutely support him although Bush never stole Davids Cookies from me.
http://www.hillnews.com/news/012804/kerry.aspx
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"Clearly, the guy who started Davids Cookies didnt invent cookies, said spokesman David DiMartino. John Kerry absolutely denies this charge"
I'm not sure about this, but I believe it really was Al Gore who invented cookies...