DADE CITY – Combat-injured Marine Corps veteran Mary Katherine Mason-Alston makes shortbread with a family recipe that dates back to her great-grandmother.
To sell to people far and wide from her Dade City store, she needed a food permit, which she obtained through help from the kitchen incubator at UF/IFAS Extension Pasco County, which runs the SMARTstart program in partnership with the Pasco County Economic Development Council.
Mason-Alston stands as a shining example of a person who served our country and now works as an entrepreneurial shortbread maker.
“Her path to success is the exact model we hope others will follow,” said Whitney Elmore, director of UF/IFAS Extension Pasco County. “A dream, hard work and using the available resources effectively all led to her success. Those resources — such as our incubator kitchen and partnership with Pasco EDC to offer entrepreneurial expertise — are specifically designed to remove barriers to food-based business owner hopefuls. Mary Katherine surrounded herself with those who knew what she didn’t. That, combined with a solid business model and a will to succeed serve as a testament that realizing a dream is not only possible but accessible to all.”
Mason-Alson opened her store in May 2021 and calls it “Lanky Lassie’s Shortbread.”
“Lanky” because she stands nearly 6 feet.
“I’m a tall girl, and I make shortbread,” Mason-Alston said. “Plus, I wanted it to be alliterative.” “Lassie” means “young girl” in Scotland.
Her journey as a budding shortbread entrepreneur started when she worked as a sales representative for the hotel industry. She made shortbread as gifts for clients. After she lost her job at the height of the pandemic in 2020, she started making shortbread, partly, as she says, because she had to make enough money to feed her children.
“One of my co-workers said, ‘this is the best shortbread I’ve ever had,’” she said.
She later won the shortbread competition at the Central Florida Scottish Highland Games with her Great-Grandma Murray’s recipe and started her shortbread business, mostly as a hobby in 2011.
“My mother always made shortbread for Christmas, and her grandmother made shortbread cookies for Christmas. People loved it,” Mason-Alston said.
What’s the secret? She credits her thicker, softer shortbread.
Word began to spread, and people would drive to her home to buy it. But she wanted more exposure, so she messaged people through the Dade City Life Facebook page.
Dade City Life asked if she was selling to local businesses. But she said she could not without a commercial kitchen.
She hoped the people at Dade City Life could share posts from her business and they gladly did. Mason-Alston discovered the Pasco County incubator through Dade City Life as well.
Turns out the SMARTstart Incubator Kitchen was just three miles from her house.
“I wasn’t actively looking for a kitchen,” she said. “I was thinking I would have to go to Tampa. It’s awesome it all worked out.”
She contacted Dan Mitchell, director of SMARTstart.
Mitchell helped connect her with the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services and guided her through the licensing process. That led to her getting her food permit, allowing her to sell wholesale. She now sells wholesale and retail from her store.
“He always had the answers I needed or connected me with those who did,” she said. “When I learned about the incubator, I sought guidance on setting up the business correctly, including legal wholesale practices.”
In addition to the incubator, Mason-Alston credits her business success to her military experience.
While a freshman at the University of South Florida, terrorists attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. That fateful day, she decided to serve her country. She always had a competitive fire in her belly from her days as a high-school athlete. Also, her brothers were already in the Marine Corps and told her it wasn’t for girls. That only fueled Mason-Alston’s fire to join.
“I wanted to do the hardest branch,” she said. “They held themselves to a higher standard. I love that type of fierceness.”
Mason-Alston served in the Marines from 2002 to 2008 and was injured during Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003.
“The grit and tenacity instilled in me as a Marine make it impossible to quit or fail,” Mason-Alston said. “I draw from the Marine Corps’ 14 leadership traits — JJDIDTIEBUCKLE: Justice, Judgement, Enthusiasm, Bearing, Dependability, Initiative, Decisiveness, Tact, Integrity, Courage, Knowledge, Loyalty, and Endurance. Living by these principles has been invaluable to my success.”
