Island mom bakes, totes her brand ‘My Kids’ Cookies’ around Bainbridge Island.

For Barbara Reininger, cookies are both a labor and a love – and she has an ambitious strategic goal.

“I want Mrs. Fields to run,” the island businesswoman and mom said.

Like any multi-tasking, working parent, Reininger seeks that sweet spot where productivity and professional fulfillment are perfectly counter-balanced against time with family and a good dinner on the table.

In many respects, My Kids’ Cookies, her new venture, has given her the ideal vehicle, right down to the white minivan emblazoned with her cheerful logo.

When Reininger’s 12- and 13-year-old kids were little, she created a busy life centered at home. And she baked. And baked. So much so that keeping cookies around the house became untenable.

“It’s unhealthy, and I’d be huge, and all sorts of other reasons,” she said. “So we’d give them away.”

She, Molly and Daniel turned cookie deliveries into a game, with each of the children putting friends’ names into a basket and then taking turns drawing to see whom they’d surprise that day with treats and a visit.

With their mouths full of chocolate chips, recipients advised Reininger to turn cookies into business.

Instead, when the kids got older she returned to work full time working for, among other companies, Banks.com. There, she headed up the “parking dots” division, securing website domain names for future sale and usage.

When the family moved to Bainbridge in 2006, Reininger made a promise to herself to move into a different type of business, one that she could embrace fully but better integrate into her family’s life.

“I was sick of saying to them, ‘I’m so sorry, I can’t, I’m working,’” she said.

Enter cookies, an endeavor that used her existing skills to turn parking dots into dough drops.

With the advantage of already having a product to sell, Reininger turned her focus to logistics and business planning. She obtained her license through the Washington State Department of Agriculture, developed a logo and secured the domain name MyKidsCookies.com.

Once the website was up and running, she knew the business was real.

As Reininger works in Poulsbo’s cozy Farm Kitchen, sliding warm, freshly baked chocolate chip walnut cookies from the pan and into the required individual plastic bags, she mulls the holiday season.

She estimates she’ll be baking 15 to 20 dozen cookies per week for individuals; for local events like upcoming Nutcracker ballet performances; and for companies like Bainbridge Cinemas, which sells her wares at the concession stand.

The winter will find her hoofing – well, vanning – around town, building connections with local businesses and selling the idea that cookies really belong anywhere people are.

A realtor, she says, could set out a locally made treat at an open house, or offer cookies as a client thank-you gift. A friend could take them to a party as a hostess present. A retailer could position them at the register to help fuel weary shoppers.

She’s even parked the domain name MyDogsCookies.com.

“I have all these great ideas – I just don’t have the kitchen yet,” she said.

That will soon change; Reininger is on the verge of signing a lease in the Sportsman Business Complex, with an eye toward running an efficient kitchen and a small retail counter where she can serve baked goods and engage parents and kids in pleasant chit-chat “after the mean old doctor’s office.”

Thinking about her own space leaves Reininger optimistic about the growth of the business and the prospects of fulfilling that vision re: Mrs. Fields.

“Now I just need an angel investor to fund it for me,” she said. “If anyone on the island wants to invest, they can call – I’ll give them free cookies.”

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