Approximately 131 to 150 pounds of flour, 38 pounds of butter, eight dozen eggs and a passion for baking is just the beginning of what it takes Cookie Jar owner and head cookie chef Maureen Lanigan to get through a day in the store.
Thursday marks Cookie Jar’s 10-year anniversary and 10 years of serving the Bowling Green community.
Lanigan and her then business partner decided to open Cookie Jar in 2006 after she fell in love with the town, adding to her “biggest passion” – baking.
When the store opened only a few other delivery shops existed, mainly pizza shops and Mister Spots. Stores like Jimmy Johns and Oasis wouldn’t come until later.
Lanigan said she and her partner decided to go into the dessert business because there was no one in that market yet, and it paired perfectly with her love for baking.
When first throwing around ideas, Lanigan said no one thought anyone would wait 15 minutes for a box of hot cookies. Most cookies at the time were sold in the same way bakeries sell donuts and bagels now. They would pick one product to make Monday, a different to make Tuesday, another for Wednesday and so on, and then they would serve the same product for four days.
“Well on the fourth day, it’s clearly not as good as the first,” Lanigan said.
She wanted her business to be focused on freshness and quality, with “made from scratch, hot cookies.”
On top of others’ doubt, banks wouldn’t loan to the aspiring business owners because the restaurant business was too risky, but with family money and a loan from the Bowling Green Community Foundation, Cookie Jar opened anyway. Not only did the store open, but it survived through the recession of 2008.
“2008 was very, very difficult for small businesses…but people still came back, and I believe that’s because of the product,” Lanigan said.
The store and its 24 employees, 20 of which are Univeristy students, make the dough fresh everyday with as few products and as little waste as possible.
“Literally we make everything we can make in a day, day after day, every single day,” she said.
Despite the concerns, Lanigan said people responded well to the wait for fresh cookies, even young kids encouraged their parents to stick around.
She said the store makes “Too many (cookies) to count” every day, but last school year, on the busiest day, she made nine batches of dough for inception cookies alone, not including any other dough for any other cookies that day. Each batch makes 130 dough balls, totaling 1170 inception cookies in one day.
She said with only two ovens in the small shop it was up to a two hour wait, but customers didn’t get angry when she explained why.
“I’m not gonna prebake cookies because that defeats the purpose of being fresh,” she said.
This freshness along with the made-from-scratch dough is what sets Cookie Jar aside from its competitors who use frozen dough and pre-baked cookies to leave in a warmer until ordered.
Other competitors are faster because of this and stay open later, but freshness and her employees safety when leaving work are more important to Lanigan.
She said she can also offer a variety others can’t as a small business because she has flexibility with her menu and prices.
Part of this variety includes the cookie of the day, which draws customers in for the new flavors and offers a different menu every day while keeping an affordable mix of ingredients.
Cookie Jar has close to 300 recipes for the cookie of the day.
“I just tried a recipe and tried it again. And if it didn’t work, I tried it again,” Lanigan said.
Cookie Jar has become a Bowling Green “tradition for families, and that was all I could ever hope for,” she said.
She shared stories of people saying they can’t pass through to Michigan without getting off freeway for Cookie Jar or can’t leave Bowling Green after a kid’s soccer camp without stopping. She even has families stopping year after year to get the same cookie cake for a birthday.
“Over the past 10 years, I have gotten so many regular customers or clientele which means the most to me,” she said.
The store will be celebrating its anniversary simultaneously with the Black Swamp Arts Festival and will offer several specials.
If customers mentions the store’s anniversary when ordering on Sept. 8 through 11, they will get 10 percent off their entire order. In addition, when ordering during these days, customers in the store can enter for a chance to win a 10 cookie hot pack every month for a year.
Lanigan also purchased a geofilter on Snapchat that will be available in the store on Sept. 8 and all along Main Street during the Black Swamp Arts Festival Sept. 9 through 11. If customers take a snap with the geofilter and show it in store, they can get a free cookie with the purchase of any hot pack.
“It’s not a product that you buy every single day or every single week because it is expensive, but I refuse to use cheaper ingredients or make the cookies smaller,” Lanigan said.
