What’s the difference between a hobby and a business? For Ebony Paul-Harris, in large part, it was her mother.

Baking cookies started out strictly as a hobby for her and her sister, Asia Lockett, in 2020. The sisters passed time baking in the uncertain early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

But their mother, Reba Paul, was adamant that it could be more than that.

“She kept saying, ‘You should really sell these, make it a business,’” Paul-Harris said.

Hesitant to take the plunge just yet, she reluctantly agreed to a challenge: if her mother could sell a few bags of cookies to people who weren’t already their friends, she’d consider making things business-official.

In retellings of Brown Suga’s origin story, Paul-Harris still notes with a laugh how quickly her mother (now the “momager” of their business) made good on that bet.

“She sold them that day,” she said. “That’s kind of how it started.”

Five years later, the familial venture has grown into a two-location cookie shop with a loyal following on both sides of the state line. Most recently, that growth took the shape of a new Leawood storefront in February.

Brown Suga opened at 11529 Ash St.

• The shop opened in a space at the Park Place shopping center, just off 115th Street and Nall Avenue.
• Brown Suga is in between jewelry shop Dalia’s Silver Lining and romance bookstore Smitten Booktique at Park Place.
• The shop’s regular hours in Leawood are 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday.

Brown Suga offers cookies and other sweets

Customers at Brown Suga can find a variety of cookies, some of which include peanut butter, snickerdoodle, lemon crinkle and double chocolate.

Some of the shop’s best-sellers include classics like chocolate chip and iced oatmeal as well as seasonal favorites like strawberry shortcake and banana pudding.

In addition to cookies, Brown Suga also offers sweet treats like brownies, ice cream and flavored lemonades.

This marks Brown Suga’s second storefront

Brown Suga drummed up its initial following through farmers markets and pop-up events.

Those early years of loading tables, setting up tents and meeting new customers laid the groundwork for Brown Suga’s first brick‑and‑mortar opening in May 2023 in Olathe. Brown Suga also now has a trailer for on-the-go sweets sales, which Paul-Harris said will serve as Brown Suga’s next main avenue of expansion.

Though a lot of the shop’s regular customers are in Johnson County near the Olathe shop, Paul-Harris said a lot of them also reside on the Missouri side of the metro area, where a lot of Brown Suga’s earliest pop-up appearances took place.

As such, Leawood seemed like a good middle ground to reach both client bases, being closer to the state line.

“Leawood to me is right on the cusp of being in Missouri,” Paul-Harris said. “It felt like the perfect medium.”

Since unveiling the new Leawood store, she said customers have shown plenty of excitement — including first-time visitors in the Park Place area and established regulars.

For Paul-Harris and her family, that excitement never really gets old. In a group chat, the sisters and their mother still share and collectively beam over screenshots of positive reviews and messages.

“We are just always so excited about what the response is to what we just genuinely love to do naturally,” she said. “That feeling, it makes it worth it. Especially during the holiday season, when we’re super tired, it’s rejuvenating to see people support us so much.”

Ask Paul‑Harris how it feels to look back on everything that has unfolded since 2020, and her answer is simple: proud, and still a little amazed.

After all, she said, they’ve never invested significantly in marketing or taken out traditional loans to propel their business forward. It’s a community-backed business — one that wouldn’t be where it is without people showing up to markets and pop-ups with a sweet tooth.

“​​It does feel like our win, but it also feels like the people who supported us are along the journey with us,” she said.

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