Meet Willa Allen, founder of Willa’s Shortbread Cookies. With a history dating back to the 1970’s, Willa’s began small in the founder’s own kitchen, located in Hendersonville, North Carolina. The country club that Willa belonged to desperately needed a dessert recipe – so she baked a pan of her traditional shortbread for the occasion. Everyone went wild over them and soon after, Willa started selling her cookies full time.

By the 1980s, Willa’s Shortbread Cookies were a well-known product and highly sought after by those who were not from the area. Snowbirds, on their way through North Carolina to Florida discovered Willa’s heavenly cookies and asked if she would ship to them so they could have them year-round. After that, the rest is history – well…sort of…

In 2005, Willa was ready to hang up her apron and sell the business, but she didn’t want to sell it to just anybody. Enter her son and his wife, as well as their brother-in-law (Eric Rion) and sister-in-law (Teresa Rion). The entrepreneurial foursome decided they had to keep the business in the family and bought it with the intention of running it part-time, and they did! – very successfully – for a few years. Willa’s son and his wife, though, eventually made the decision to step away from the business which caused the company to almost be sold off, but Eric and his wife, Teresa chose to both quit their full-time jobs, focus on the family business, and relocate to Tennessee – and NOW the rest is history!!