What is Debbi Fields' Net Worth?
Debbi Fields is an American entrepreneur and author who has a net worth of $200 million. Debbi Fields is best known as the founder of snack food franchiser Mrs. Fields. Since the company's launch in Palo Alto, California in 1977, it has expanded to more than 750 locations in over 20 countries around the world. Among her other endeavors, Fields has penned a number of cookbooks.
She was one of the first Oakland A's ball girls during the '60s and used her five-dollars-an-hour earnings to start her cookie business when she was 13 years old. When Fields was 19, she wed her first husband, Randy Fields. She launched her cookie company in Palo, Alto, California, in 1977, when she was a 20-year-old housewife.
Fields' cookie baking business franchised in 1990 and was later sold during the early '90s. Fields remains the business' spokeswoman. She is the author of a handful of cookbooks, including the first to ever top the "New York Times" bestseller list. She is famous for her motto, "Good Enough Never Is".
Early Life
Debbi Fields was born as Debra Jane Sivyer in Oakland, California as the youngest of five daughters of a housewife mother and a Navy welder father. As an average student in school, she found her passion in the kitchen early on, and began baking cookies that earned high praise from her family and friends. At the age of 13, Fields started taking odd jobs to help pay for her cookie ingredients. One of her jobs was as a "ball girl" for the MLB team the Oakland Athletics, a job she got through her sister who worked at the team's offices. In this role, Fields retrieved foul baseballs near the baselines.
As a teen, Fields went to Alameda High School, where she was named homecoming queen in her senior year. Following this, she attended the Los Altos Hills community college Foothill College for two years. Fields went on to attend Stanford University.
Mrs. Fields
In August of 1977, Fields founded her own cookie company, Mrs. Fields, in Palo Alto, California. Offering homemade-style cookies, the company soon became enormously popular, opening stores in numerous shopping malls and airports in the United States. In 1982, the company headquarters was moved to Park City, Utah. Later, in 1990, Mrs. Fields was sold to an investment firm. The company went on to acquire a number of other brands over the course of the decade, such as TCBY, Pretzel Time, Pretzelmaker, and Great American Cookies. One of the biggest retailers of freshly baked cookies and brownies, Mrs. Fields has more than 300 franchised locations across the United States and over 100 in countries around the world. In addition to its on-premise baked goods, the company offers retail groceries and gifts.
In 2007, Nexcen Brands bought Pretzelmaker and Pretzel Time from Mrs. Fields; it later purchased Great American Cookies in 2008. Due to these sales and consequent company restructuring, Mrs. Fields had many layoffs, and was in danger of bankruptcy. In 2011, the company faced the threat of bankruptcy again, but avoided it by handing over control to its creditors, Carlyle and Z Capital Partners. Mrs. Fields moved its corporate headquarters to Broomfield, Colorado in 2012; the next year, Z Capital Partners became the company's sole owner. However, Fields herself remains the company spokesperson. In 2014, the company acquired Maxfield Candy and Nutty Guys.
Personal Life
When she was 19 years of age in 1976, Fields married Stanford alum Randall Keith Fields, the founder of the financial consulting firm Fields Investment Group. Together, the couple had five daughters named Jessica, Jennifer, Jenessa, Ashley, and McKenzie. The pair eventually divorced in 1997.
Fields and her second husband, former Holiday Inn and Harrah's CEO Michael Rose were married from 1998 until his death in 2017. Through their marriage, she has five stepchildren. Michael started his career as a lawyer in Cincinnati who represented one of the largest owners of Holiday Inn franchises. Through that relationship, Michael helped turn around the struggling Holiday Inn parent company and was eventually named Chairman of the company's board. During his reign, Holiday Corp owned Holiday Inn, Hampton Inns, Embassy Suites and Harrah's Casinos.
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Real Estate
In the 1980s, Debbi and her first husband owned a 200,000 acre ranch in Utah which became a bone of contention during their divorce trial. The couple fought bitterly over who should actually own the ranch and ultimately lost it to foreclosure after years of neglect and unpaid taxes. The ranch, which sat vacant for a decade while the battle was raging, was bought at auction for $3.5 million in 2011. After years of renovations, the new owner put the ranch on the market for $45 million in September 2019.
Debbi and Michael Rose lived much of their life together in Memphis, Tennessee. They also owned a 500+ acre ranch in Aspen, Colorado which they listed for sale in 2008 for $25 million and then in 2010 for $28 million. Michael bought the undeveloped land in 1993 for $4.8 million. In 2002 the built an 11,000 square foot home inspired by Japanese architecture.
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