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IN THE KITCHEN: Jon Vogel’s contract with his clients is sweet, scrumptious and fun

By Pat Tanner Special Writer
    The last person I expected to appear on my doorstep on Dec. 24, 2006, was Jon Vogel, owner of New Outlooks Construction, the Robbinsville contracting firm I had just hired to refurbish my kitchen. Work wasn’t due to get under way until the day after New Year’s, but there he was, with a brightly colored holiday cookie tin in hand. This was no ordinary corporate gift from business owner to client. Every year, Mr. Vogel hand-delivers a dozen chocolate chip cookies he makes from scratch, using a recipe of his own ýdevising, to clients past, present and, in my case, future.
    “It started about eight years ago,” Mr. Vogel explains. “I wanted to thank customers I felt particularly close to. I made twelve dozen cookies that year and packed them into holiday tins. I went out on Christmas Eve day and distributed them. The second year, I was up to 30 dozen, and decided to enclose a history of the company for that year. It was the year of 9/11 and we had lost a couple of clients, among them the pilot of the TWA flight.”
    The holiday letter tradition has endured since then.
    “One year I made cookies for a client in West Windsor, Helen Shriver. Three or four years ago she informed me that she wanted a copy of my recipe, which I have refined over the years, adding espresso powder and extra vanilla.” Ms. Shriver, working with designer Kathleen Hudson, had the recipe printed up on a laminated holiday card in the shape of a scroll, and Mr. Vogel sometimes includes that with his gift, as well.
    “That same year we were up to between 60 and 70 dozen cookies,” Mr. Vogel recalls. “My daughter, Kelly, was 8 at the time, and she began accompanying me on the deliveries. We would drive from 6 a.m. to 11 a.m., going from house to house like Santa.” Kelly Vogel is now 14 and is involved in every aspect of the project, from buying ingredients (in bulk) to baking, packing and distribution.
    One longtime Princeton client, Anne Glynn Mackoul, recalls with fondness the years when “little Kelly” would come wearing a Santa hat. “The cookies are such a lovely gesture on Jon’s part. It’s always nice to be remembered and to get to see him around the holidays,” she says. She and her husband, Sabry, hired New Outlooks for a major expansion in 2000. “Jon and his crew were at our house every day for a year,” she says. “When someone comes into your home for all that time, the relationship becomes personal.”
    The couple still marvels at the Christmas “miracle” Mr. Vogel and his crew pulled off that year.
    “By Dec. 22 our project was far from finished, but I had 35 guests coming for Christmas dinner, including overnight guests starting on the 23rd,” Anne Mackoul relates. “That day every single employee of New Outlooks swarmed over my house, including, I believe, the secretaries.” The Mackouls left the house early that day to attend a family wedding and when they (with guests in tow) returned that night, not only was construction completed, but, Ms. Mackoul reports, “Jon had placed plants all around the house, and his carpenter had even hung the pictures on the walls.”
    New Outlooks currently employs 20 people and has grown from $1.5 million seven years ago to $4 million this year.
    Mr. Vogel grew up in Manalapan and earned a B.A. at Trenton State (now the College of New Jersey), where he also worked as adjunct professor while earning a master’s degree in education. “I worked as a cabinetmaker to put myself through school,” he says, “and then one of my clients asked me to build him a deck.”
    That customer lived in a Toll Brothers development, and before Mr. Vogel knew it, he had built more than 100 decks there. “I went back to school for design and set up my first office in the attic of my house.” Three years ago, he moved the business to its current location, complete with showroom, on Robbinsville’s main street.
    Mr. Vogel estimates that last year he and Kelly made about 120 dozen cookies — that’s more than 1,400. “My office puts together a map of my route by zip code, because we have to have it done by 11 a.m. for our own holiday,” he explains. “We make the cookies assembly-line style. Starting last year, a friend of Kelly’s began helping us out. I mix the dough, they prepare the cookie sheets and then place the cooled cookies into the containers, with the folded letters for the year. We pack 20 tins to a box for delivery.”
    The baking is typically done in Vogel’s home kitchen, but this year that room is, ironically enough, undergoing renovation.
    “My daughter has been such a big part of this over the years,” says Mr. Vogel. “We commence Thanksgiving weekend and finish up the week before Christmas. A major part of the experience for me is bonding with Kelly. She and I really look forward to it. We tease each other; we take photos with our phones and send them to friends. It’s always a fun time. This year she had her girlfriend stay over one night and they baked until 1 a.m. just to surprise me. It was wonderful!”
    Kelly Vogel, a freshman at Robbinsville High, claims that one of her key functions is “to check to make sure each batch of cookies tastes OK.” She, too, looks forward to the project each year. “I’m the one who asks if we can start baking the cookies yet,” she says.
    These days, Mr. Vogel personally delivers to key people, to repeat customers, and to jobs that New Outlooks worked on during the year. “It’s great because they’ll invite me in so I can see the project completed and with their furniture back in place,” which, he says, is not always something a contractor gets access to.
    There’s a danger to this approach, though: Some lucky recipients, he reports, have been known to ask for seconds.
JON VOGEL’S
FAMOUS
CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES
1 cup dark brown sugar
    ½ cup white sugar
    ½ teaspoon baking soda
    ¼ teaspoon salt (optional)
    1 tablespoon instant espresso powder
    1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
    1 cup (2 sticks) salted butter, at room temperature
    2 large eggs
    2½ cups all-purpose flour
    2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
1. Combine dark brown sugar, white sugar, baking soda, salt, espresso powder, vanilla, and butter. Mix by hand until a smooth paste forms. Add eggs and mix thoroughly by hand. Slowly add flour, one cup at a time. Add chocolate chips. Chill mixture for approximately 15 minutes.
    2. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Tear off about 1 teaspoon of dough and roll into a ball. Place balls about three inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake for approximately 12 minutes.
    Makes about 60 cookies.