Bliss built on biscotti

The "aha" moment for Linda and Lou Yaseen came in their Bellevue kitchen. The couple were having their regular talk about going into business for themselves, lamenting they had not found the right product to realize that dream.

Then Linda's gaze fell on a loaf of biscotti, fresh from the oven. She'd made it for years using a family recipe from her mother.

Suddenly she had a revelation. She added biscotti to two ingredients she and Lou knew well from working at DoveBar — ice cream and chocolate — and loved the taste.

Two years later, the Yaseens oversee a 45,000-square-foot manufacturing operation in Renton that pumps out as many as 9,000 biscotti ice-cream sandwiches an hour. Called Blisscotti, they are laced with dark chocolate, come in five flavors and recently began appearing on store freezer shelves from Alaska to Arizona.

Lou Yaseen hopes the company, which raised about $8 million from about 30 friends and business associates, will break even this year and the treats be available nationally in 2008.

If Blisscotti catches on, the company is ready to grow.

The Yaseens built the Renton factory with expansion in mind. They can double the capacity of a machine that makes 80-foot lengths of toasted almond biscotti. And they have the space to add more machines and employees.

Because the treats are distributed through Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream, they can be shipped nationwide.

Distribution was key to the Yaseens. Dreyer's had turned down Lou before, when he was leading the expansion of DoveBar from a Chicago neighborhood ice-cream novelty to a national brand back in the 1980s.

But two years ago, it agreed to partner with the Yaseens for Blisscotti, including distributing the product along with its own and taking part ownership in the Renton company.

Dori Bailey, a spokeswoman for Dreyer's, said the ice-cream giant rarely partners with other manufacturers this way. But "part of the business decision was that overall, this is going to be good for Dreyer's," she said.

Next, the Yaseens had to figure out how to make Blisscotti for the masses.

The couple met with food scientists and packaging and equipment engineers at their kitchen table. They shared homemade Blisscotti samples and discussed how to duplicate it on a large scale.

In the end, they decided to make their own biscotti and ice cream, rather than buy and assemble the ingredients.

Blisscotti begin in a Willie Wonkalike room with stainless-steel bowls that hold 400 pounds of dough. They are baked, sliced, then baked again in a process that gives biscotti their name, which comes from the Italian "biscottare" — to bake twice.

The thin crescents move along a conveyor belt, which first dips them in chocolate then carries the bottom halves under a tube that layers them with vanilla, strawberry, lemon, coffee chocolate chip or mint chocolate chip ice cream before completing the sandwiches with biscotti tops.

The sandwiches are frozen in a room that reaches dozens of degrees below zero, then packaged and prepared for Dreyer's trucks to pick up.

For the Yaseens, Blisscotti represent a chance to try their hands at entrepreneurship after decades of advising others.

The couple met at DoveBar in the 1980s, when Lou helped the then-family-owned company take its product nationwide. Linda was vice president of sales and marketing.

Since leaving DoveBar, Lou and Linda have been consultants, and Lou unsuccessfully tried to turn around a company that owned art galleries.

The couple moved to Seattle in 1996 because Lou spent so much time working with the company that makes Sonicare toothbrushes. "He was here so much, we said maybe that's where we want to raise our children," Linda said.

For years, they thought about launching a product but never settled on anything.

They also found they often advised other potential entrepreneurs to wait for the urge to pass.

"It's tough to get distribution and the consumer's eye. And then you have to wonder, does the world really need a brand new marinade?" Lou said.

Now they get questions about what it's like to work together on a startup, and Lou jokes that the only project they managed together before Blisscotti was a remodeling project.

For Blisscotti, Lou, 61, is in charge of manufacturing and finance, while Linda oversees sales and marketing. They have 45 employees.

Linda, 54, figures the best way to market Blisscotti at first is through samples in groceries, on sidewalks and at as many office parties as she can find.

In the next few weeks, pedestrians in Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles will be treated to bite-sized Blisscotti from sample-handlers traveling in Volkswagen Beetles covered with images of the new treat.

Linda views the competition as anything adults might eat instead, from candy bars to pie. Direct competition will come from other ice-cream products, but probably not ice-cream sandwiches, which she thinks are mostly for children.

"Nobody else has figured out how to keep the cookies from getting soggy," Linda said, "and I don't think adults like soggy cookies."

Seattle Times researcher Gene Balk contributed to this article.

Melissa Allison: 206-464-3312 or mallison@seattletimes.com