Hometown Hero: Sarah Guinther is ‘changing the world, one cookie at a time’ through the Maddi Hatter Cookie Company

Sarah Guinther stood behind a tray of freshly baked red velvet cookies with a bowl of cream cheese icing and slathered a dollop of white fluff onto each cookie. She slid each finished treat into a small plastic bag, and her nine-year-old daughter, Maddy, helped label and seal the packaged cookies with pink stickers.

Every week, Guinther bakes and packages 55 dozen cookies from her home kitchen in Bow, rotating between 42 flavors that include everything from carrot cake to maple bacon. Her business, the Maddi Hatter Cookie Company, named after her daughter and their favorite character from Alice in Wonderland, has always been committed to more than just sweets, though.

Guinther donates half of her proceeds to various women’s shelters and domestic violence support organizations in the community. Before donating to women’s shelters, Guinther donated the cookie company’s profits to foster children. She saw that many children had nothing more than a trash bag to use when transferring their personal items from home to home, so she bought suitcases full of clothes to ease the struggle of frequent moving.

“Over time, I just had to keep showing up,” she said. “It’s all about showing up in relationships.”

Guinther is often met with a list of cookie orders that need to be filled when she comes home after a long day at work.

Her routine is demanding; “sometimes I’m up until two or three in the morning… and then I’m back at it at six in the morning getting [Maddy] ready for school,” she said. But her day job at pharmaceutical company Ares Scientific, where Guinther said there is a culture of service, keeps her motivated.

“The one thing that we all have in common as employees is we all give back to community in some form or another,” said Guinther.

Guinther’s life, like her cookie company, has always had a concern for service. Before embarking on a sales career, Guinther planned to go to law school and do a combination of family and pro bono work. She eventually changed career trajectories and became a microbiologist for 20 years, continuing to serve the community through her company’s donations to the Jocelyn Diabetes Research Center.

Despite the demands of her day job and motherhood, Guinther has never wavered in growing her cookie business. Her profits have doubled every year since she started in 2022.

“It’s a slow climb, but it’s only a one-way trajectory,” she said.

Every dollar of profit Guinther makes either goes back into the business or to charity. She uses her own money to supplement cookie-production costs when needed. Bridges, a Nashua-based organization that gives resources to women fleeing situations of domestic violence, is the cookie company’s main partner.

Guinther, a survivor of domestic violence herself, feels particularly strong about this issue.

“Women in domestic violence situations will go back at least seven times. The statistics are out there, and if they have the resources then the receptive rate is so much more,” she said.

When she was in college, Guinther taught gardening at a local women’s prison. She says it was there that many women opened up to her about their experiences with domestic and sexual violence. One woman’s story in particular struck her: The woman had killed her husband after he physically abused her every day for 18 years. She was serving five years in prison when she and Guinther met.

That experience stayed with her, and Guinther became inspired to help women in similar situations, women who felt like they had nowhere else to turn.

She said she loves Bridges because they don’t put any conditions on the people they help.

“If you have four kids, they don’t discriminate. If you have pets, they don’t discriminate. They find a living situation for you so you don’t go back.” Guinther said.

Beyond Bridges, Guinther is using money from the cookie company and various donors to start a college scholarship fund for underprivileged children. She also donates cookies to the New Hampshire book festival every year and is generally adamant about donating to customers who can’t afford the cost of a cookie.

“It takes me an hour to make something, and what is an hour of my life, right?” Guinther said. “Our biggest thing is no child should ever go without, and I know way too many kids who have gone without. If they need cookies, if they need a cake, if they need anything, just ask.”

With her market and service agenda growing larger and larger every year, Guinther said she is outgrowing her kitchen. She is hoping to move into a storefront soon to produce more cookies and continue, as the cookie company’s motto states, “changing the world, one cookie at a time.”

Jane Miller can be reached at jmiller@cmonitor.com