Every day, Christina Jokerst is awake by 5 a.m., mixing and rolling cookie dough.
For the past three years, she has owned and operated KCookies out of her home. Now the popular Olathe cookie shop has officially opened its first storefront — a move she said customers have been eager for.
KCookies operates at 1239 W. Harold St.
- The bakery moved into a space just off of Harold Street and the K-7 highway.
- It neighbors Sarpino’s and Chiefs Liquor.
- KCookies operates from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.
Peppermint bark cookies in the making at KCookies. Photo credit Lucie Krisman.
KCookies sells six-ounce cookies in several flavors
The bakery offers a range of flavors, from classics like chocolate chip and snickerdoodle to signature flavors like the “Better than XOXO” — a chocolate cookie with whipped cream, toffee and caramel sauce.
Jokerst said the inspiration for flavors often comes from other desserts. For example, she once designed a cookie based off of her white almond wedding cake, and the “poppy chow” cookie idea came from her family’s love of the sugary snack.
The cookie shop started out with appearances at local pop-ups and markets, while Jokerst slowly turned her basement into a bakery and acquired more equipment.
Jokerst said the transition into a storefront came from the shop’s steadily-growing popularity.
“To date, we still have not spent (any money) on advertising,” she said. “It’s all word of mouth.”
Jokerst’s cookie enthusiasm goes back several years
Jokerst said baking in general had a family tie, as she grew up baking bread and kolaches with her grandmother. But her interest specifically in cookies goes back six years, to a New York City trip where she tried the famous chocolate chip cookie at Levain Bakery.
She promptly returned to Kansas City and started searching “high and low” for a similar cookie in the area, but her search came up empty. So the solution, she said, seemed to be to create her own.
“It almost became an obsession,” she said. “I started sharing them with people, and people were like, ‘Where did you get these?’, and I just said, ‘Well, I made them.’”
Even just after opening the first KCookies storefront, Jokerst said customers have already asked when she might open a second one. But for now, she said she’d like to focus on getting the first bakery on its feet — and on baking for the customers that have been buying her cookies since she was making them out of her basement.
“We know a lot of our customers by name,” she said. “I do their weddings, I do their kids’ birthdays and their gender reveals. I kind of like having that small feel. So right now, I’m just comfortable with that.”
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