Imagine this: You drop everything and move to idyllic Vermont with the love of your life. You escape the maddening chaos of daily life to live in the quiet countryside and bake cookies- for a living. For one woman, this isn’t a dream- it’s a reality.

Founded in a tiny attic kitchen outside Philadelphia, Liz Lovely Cookies was born as a reaction to tumultuous times. Before Liz Lovely, the young couple endured the rise and fall of their first company, subsequent corporate jobs, layoffs and debt. “We ran a web design company together,” Hotlz, 32, recalls. “With the dot com crash, no one was building web sites anymore. We had to close down. After that, we had a lot of debt and had to get corporate jobs. When we were both laid off, I decided I couldn’t do that anymore. I had to do something creative. I wanted to create jobs for the both of us.”

Much to her husband’s dismay, Hotlz began to fill the freezer with delicious vegan hand-dipped chocolates for her friends and family.  Despite a minimal kitchen and cramped conditions, she managed to perfect her recipes. They baked hundreds of cookies and distributed the sweet samples. “The first year, the challenging part was not knowing the industry. We worked a lot of hours,” she reminisces.  “It was an unfocused time but also a really fun time. You have all that energy and the passion is there- but you don’t really know what you’re doing. We started out going directly to stores, driving the cookies there, demoing on the weekends and just trying to get everyone we could to receive our product. And that launched us into getting a distribution deal. In the beginning, it was very grassroots.”

So how did this little cookie company become a darling of the retail giant Whole Foods? “We were in touch with our local Whole Foods store, and we heard there was a regional meeting in another state coming up. We decided to just go there,” Holtz recounts. “On a whim, at five in the morning, we drove to the meeting and dropped off cookies. We didn’t expect to hear from them. A month later, the buyer for the mid-Atlantic region called us. We got into seven stores, which grew into twenty stores. We didn’t think it would pan out, but sometimes you have to take risks.”

Soon after, they took another risk. A year after launching the fledging company, with a

 lucrative contract with Whole Foods hanging in the balance, they packed up their cars and relocated. Since 2004, the couple and the company have been based in Waitsfield, Vermont, with a population under 2000 people. “We’re in the historic and beautiful Mad River Valley, deep in the heart of Vermont's Green Mountains,” Holtz reveals.  “The air is clean, the water is pure, and there are no traffic lights.”

Her line of cookies, snacks and chocolates are ideal for those with both a sweet tooth and a social consciousness. Her nine cookie flavors include Mochadamia Mountains, made from coffee, macadamias and chocolate, Cowgirl cookies, which taste just like chocolate chip cookie dough and the bestseller, Ginger Snapdragons, which invokes molasses and ginger. In addition to the collection of confectionary crave-worthy cookies, Liz Lovely sells a range of goodies covered in organic chocolate- everything from pretzels to ginger candy to fruits like mango and apricot.

All the items are fair trade, organic and vegan. But creating delicious desserts using organic and vegan ingredients has been a formidable challenge. “We’ve had to reformulate a few times. To certify our product as organic, we had to change the base oil we use,” Holtz confides. “Its been challenging to keep the product consistent as well as improve the quality. It’s a process. Baking a product like this, it has to be right every time. It’s difficult working with organic ingredients. You never know if they’re going to be exactly the same every time you get them.”

Even their packaging is environmentally friendly. They try to use shredded paper from local business offices whenever possible, as well as recycled paper and biodegradable ribbon. “We use corn starch peanuts or craft paper that can be recycled,” Holtz explains. “All of the tubs we use for our chocolate products are made out of corn.”

With a rising business, a product in more than 400 stores nationwide and a creative team at the helm, there are still bumps in the road. “The biggest challenge has been education. People don’t understand why we cost more,” she discloses. “The ingredients are better for the planet. Everyone wants to indulge, but you can buy our product without a guilty conscience. Unlike bigger companies, we’ll tell you exactly where the ingredients come from.”

Since the company’s inception five years ago, the founders have seen the attention to the sustainable and eco-conscious industry increase wildly. In the short span of time since Holtz started baking her tasty treats, green has gone from subculture niche to an everyday buzz word and a word in the common consumer lexicon. “I think the attention is great. Any way we can get the green message across is good for the industry,” she reflects. “We are just going to have to work harder and harder to maintain the organic company status. I think its cool to be able to use the organic business label, but we just want to be sure people are going to keep up the demand. A lot of people say they want to be greener, but they’re not willing to pay more or be educated. I think it’s going to be a process.”

She is hopeful about the future of sustainable business and the impact on consumers. “I would like to see green be the only option,” Hotlz envisions. “I would like to see incentives for business that are trying to do the right thing get help. I think there will be more and more support for people like us, people who realize the damage we have all done, buying mass produced cheaper goods.”

While the future of the eco-friendly industry is uncertain, Holtz has big plans for the future of her cookie company. “I would like to go more and more direct and build relationships with our customers. A company like us gets lost in the big churn of what the organic industry is now. Most companies are co-packing but we maintain our own facilities,” laments Holtz. “I’m still baking the cookies! We’d like to remain one of those old-time businesses, dealing directly with the customers. Also, I’d like to rely more directly on our website. While we do a lot of samplers and holiday packages, I’d like to build it up to be fifty percent of our business, as where right now its only 10 percent.”

Holtz and her adoring husband, soon celebrating ten years of marriage, seem to lead the ideal existence. She has taken her unlikely passion- cookies- and combined it with her sustainable, vegan philosophy to form a viable and profitable business. In the mountains of the peaceful Vermont countryside, their everyday life is unlike those of most couples. “It is pretty idyllic. We come to work together,” Ms. Holtz describes. “I bake all day. Dan makes sales calls. We get to do our own thing. Then after work, we take the dog for a long walk on our way home. It’s pretty beautiful here. There’s no daily stress, except for the stress you make for yourself.”

The ingredients to this story are simple: Add one part love story, combine with two parts fierce entrepreneurial spirit and sprinkle in a bit of social consciousness and innate love for the environment. The end result is tasty, tempting and truly unique. With a loyal fan base and a lucrative yet rewarding enterprise, Ms. Holtz has proved that she is one smart cookie.

For more about Liz LovelyCookies, visit http://www.lizlovely.com