Fifteen years ago, Jill McEnroe was working as a graphic designer, and her boss’s birthday was approaching.
She needed a birthday cake, but decorated cakes at the grocery store were pricy. So she turned to her mother’s recipe book and landed on the cinnamon streusel coffee cake.
She made three coffee cakes — one for her boss and another two for her husband to take to work. Within the next 24 hours, both her boss and her husband’s coworkers insisted she could (and should) sell her coffee cakes.
So she did. Her coffee cake company Frannie Franks has drummed up a loyal following at the Overland Park Farmers Market and its brick-and-mortar store in Independence, Missouri.
Now it’s expanding further, with a new store in Leawood. McEnroe aims to open her new store by Sept. 1.
Frannie Franks will be at 11828 Roe Ave.
- The shop will move into a space on the east side of the Town Center Plaza shopping center, just off West 119th Street and Roe Avenue.
- Juicery and healthy eatery Ruby Jean’s Juicery previously occupied that space, before closing its Leawood location this past spring.
- Though regular hours aren’t finalized, McEnroe said the Leawood location will have longer hours than the Independence store.
Frannie Franks serves coffee cakes in various flavors
To date, Frannie Franks offers cakes in up to 150 flavors.
Those flavors range from the “original” cinnamon streusel (the bakery’s best-seller) and apple crumb to chocolate caramel and lemon blackberry.
Frannie Franks also sells cheesecake coffee cakes, with a layer of cream cheese inside. (McEnroe’s personal favorite is cherry cheesecake.)
All of the flavors at Frannie Franks have options that are gluten-free and dairy-free — aside from the cheesecakes and chocolate flavors that do have dairy.
“People can’t get enough of it,” McEnroe said. “They try a slice of it, and they say, ’Oh, this is like a hug from Grandma.’”
The Leawood location will offer at least 30 flavors, with some unique weekend and holiday specials too. Rather than dine-in, customers will pick up their cakes in-store and take them home.
With people who live in Leawood already placing regular delivery orders, McEnroe said Frannie Franks already has a strong following out south. With the expansion, she’s looking forward to getting to meet more of those customers in person.
“We love to talk with everybody that comes into the shop,” she said. “We have a lot of regulars, and we usually remember their big life events, because our cakes are usually a part of that.”
Frannie Franks has family ties
The Frannie Franks brand has several nods to her family, including its name. Frannie Franks is a combination of McEnroe’s mother’s first name Frannie and her grandfather’s name Frank.
In a way, McEnroe said the business itself pays homage to her mother, whose high school senior photo is also depicted in the store’s logo.
She cooked everything from scratch through McEnroe’s childhood — including the now-famous coffee cake, which their family frequently enjoyed as a weekend breakfast.
Her mother had always wanted to start her own business, McEnroe said, but she didn’t have the resources to do so in the 1950s and the 1960s.
So in a way, running a business with her family and sharing her mother’s recipe feels like a full-circle moment to McEnroe, and a fulfilling one, at that.
“It’s just been the most fun I’ve ever had doing anything,” McEnroe said. “I’m building the memories, and our customers are helping build them.”
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