Nicole Fritzsche is someone who learns as she goes in life. Her path to becoming the franchise business owner of Sticky Fingers Cooking® didn’t start with a love for food or business ownership. 

This 34-year old mom of three in Erie, Colorado initially studied health and exercise science with the goal of becoming a physical therapist. “After working at a couple of physical therapy offices, I decided that it wasn’t what I wanted to do,” she says. 

Her first pivot was to go back to school and get a master’s degree in early childhood education. She taught for five years under difficult circumstances and felt spread thin so when her second child was born in 2020, she decided to become a stay-at-home mom.” This was during COVID so it was a good time to be home with the kids,” she explains.

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Baking Up a Dream

However, Nicole isn’t the sit at home type and by 2021 she was starting her own business making custom cookies. “I wanted something to work towards, to put my brain power towards, besides just being a mom, and something I could do with my kids at home while being available to them,” she says. 

She launched Cookies by Nicole, which she says she had already been doing for friends and family for several years. The business primarily involved baking and decorating sugar cookies for birthday parties, baby showers, and other events, as well as making gourmet cookies and numbered cookie cakes. Her strategy was relatively simple: “If I bring twenty-four cookies to a party, that’s twenty-four more people that know about the business.”

And it worked! “It spread like wildfire,” she says. “I got into teaching cookie decorating at local venues and doing private classes too.”

In fact, it worked a little too well, and like a sheet of cookie dough left in the oven, Nicole found herself burned (out). “I’d kind of maxed out my cookie business,” Nicole explains. “I’m as busy as I can be, but can’t take on any additional orders and don’t want to do a brick and mortar.” In addition, she often found herself up late nights to fill orders and she felt a pull to work with kids again. 

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From Cookies to Cooking

In the back of her mind, Nicole had remembered when she learned about Sticky Fingers Cooking before she had kids of her own. She and her husband, Beck, had attended a cooking class for adults at Denver’s Stir Cooking School, which also serves as a location for some of the Sticky Fingers Cooking summer camps so she saw an ad for the business. “I always thought I could be an instructor for Sticky Fingers Cooking,” she says. “It looked like such a fun job! I didn’t pursue it because it was in Denver and we live in Erie.” At that time, Sticky Fingers Cooking was not a franchise business model either. 

As proud parents today to Ettalaine, 7, Opal, 5, and Maddoc, 1, Nicole and Beck, who works as a mechanical engineer, began to research this idea from the past. “I was thinking about my next career move and looked up kids cooking classes,” Nicole says. “I remembered Sticky Fingers Cooking and reached out. It felt right from the beginning and I took a leap!”

Erin Fletter, founder and CEO of Sticky Fingers Cooking®, says that Nicole came across as a natural fit for an education franchise business immediately. “From our very first conversation, I knew Nicole was destined to thrive as a Sticky Fingers Cooking franchise owner. She’s smart, focused, and incredibly thoughtful, with her own perfect blend of small-business savvy and teaching experience that organically aligns with our mission. As a dedicated mom of three, she brings both heart and vision to everything she does–in the kitchen and beyond!”

Plus, she adds, “It feels especially meaningful and exciting to see our roots branch north from where Sticky Fingers Cooking was founded in Denver. She and her team will be serving more kids across Northern Colorado and all the way to the Wyoming border! Having her so close to headquarters makes this even sweeter. I know she will grow a fruitful business that inspires kids to cook with joy, curiosity, and confidence.” 

The Icing on Top

Nicole’s journey to business owner is just as circuitous as her path to cooking and baking. When she was a kid herself, she loved to help in the kitchen, she says. “When I was in fourth grade, I saw a recipe for chicken pot pie and announced I was making it for the family for dinner,” she recalls. “I used tablespoons instead of teaspoons for the thyme, and to this day I cannot stand the taste, but my parents sat there straight-faced and ate it all.”

As an elementary school teacher for third and fifth grades, she also faced challenges to overcome. “For my first three years of teaching, there was no curriculum, no workbook, no nothing,” she says matter-of-factly. “It was very hard and exhausting. All we had were the state standards, and I had to create every lesson plan or buy it from other people to make it work. Finally, we got math and reading curriculums with guided questions and it made such a world of difference! I had a foundation.”

Now she compares those early teaching years to starting her own cookies business versus starting a franchise business. “I am super impressed by what Sticky Fingers Cooking has created and the rapport,” she says of the 3,000 original globally-inspired recipes and complete curriculum that Sticky Fingers Cooking offers. “I’m not interested in doing it on my own and I’m confident because Sticky Fingers Cooking does such a good job!”

Sticky Fingers Cooking® of Northern Colorado (dubbed NoCo) includes Fort Collins, Erie, Brighton, and surrounding areas. “I recently read that Erie is the fourth fastest growing community in the nation,” Nicole says, citing a statistic showing that this area between Denver and Fort Collins went from a population of 10,000 to 40,000 in 10 years. “It is primarily families and there is a huge need for kids programming.”

Sticky Fingers Cooking® franchise opportunities are available across the country to people who are a good fit for investing in this business ownership model. Read more about the business history and what we’re looking for in franchisees, then click here to inquire about bringing cooking classes to your area.