Innovative Cooking Enterprises: cookbook for automatic bread makers rises to fill a niche.

• Author: Maschmeyer, Gloria
• Position: 'Electric Bread' cookbook - Company Profile

Each day a small, three-person office in Anchorage is deluged with calls from all over the United States. Individuals and companies alike are placing orders, requesting information or just calling to chat. What's so hot? It's a new Alaskan product -- Electric Bread, a cookbook for automatic bread makers, featuring more than 50 gourmet recipes.

Spawned by the company Innovative Cooking Enterprises Inc., Electric Bread is an overnight success. Since October, when the book first was released, Innovative Cooking's gross sales have topped $700,000.

Also impressive is how the product was produced within an extremely short time and was made camera-ready within the boundaries of Alaska. After the idea germinated in February 1991, the company was formed and incorporated in April, and the final product reached retailers in October.

Ann Parrish, president of Innovative Cooking, explains that her initial interest in developing a cookbook piqued when she discovered that no one bread recipe for automatic bread makers worked in all brands and models of bread machines. When she investigated the market, she found that nearly one million of the newfangled bread-baking machines had been sold and that, outside of two small paperback cookbooks, no comprehensive guide for making bread in the machines existed. Parrish's extensive business background -- 12 years with a national accounting firm and recent ownership of an entrepreneurial consulting firm -- coupled with her uncanny intuition told her she had found a niche.

Introduced only four years ago, the automatic bread-maker appliance is quickly gaining popularity; sales doubled in 1991. It's estimated that nearly two million machines have been sold. According to Parrish, about 1 percent of households own the machines and among those owners the acceptance rate is high. She expects that over time automatic bread makers will be as commonplace as video-cassette recorders in homes.

One reason for the machine's popularity is the simplicity of its use. Consumers merely add the ingredients, plug in the machine and set the cycle. A few hours later, the homemade bread is ready to eat. All the mixing and baking is done right in the machine.

Parrish's excitement about producing a cookbook for the machine was infectious. First to join her as a business partner was Mary Willis Kiessling, a former executive director of Humana Hospital. Kiessling had been running her own consulting business and was ready to take on a new...