We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Deenna, Akema, Jameka Ellies, McKee, Davis. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Deenna, Akema, Jameka below.
Deenna, Akema, Jameka, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. One of the most important things we can do as business owners is ensure that our customers feel appreciated. What’s something you’ve done or seen a business owner do to help a customer feel valued?
As a token of appreciation to our customers we provide them with thank you cards that consist of a personal written message, an inspirational quote, and a box of brownies as a surprise treat for supporting us. We did this for our Father’s Day Sale.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Cookie Inspo was originated in thoughts by my late mother, “NANABOO”. She had a great passion for baking and taught me, Deenna, how to bake at a very early age. She didn’t have much money therefore her heart and soul went into her baking. In every basket she gave tasty homemade cookies to people on holidays with a side of “inspiration” on a card. That is why my partners, Akema McKee and Jameka Davis and I chose the name Cookie Inspo (Cookies with inspirational quotes).
We are three Queens out of Charlotte, NC and we love to bake. We specialize in homemade cookies with original recipes that date back to the early 1900’s passed down from generation to generation. We are most known for our Red Velvet, Butterscotch, and Sugar Cookies. We are most proud of ourselves, and our dedication to making Nanaboo’s dream, as well as our dream, come true. We feel that our homemade cookies are what sets us apart from others. Most desserts nowadays consists of cakes, cupcakes and chocolate covered strawberries. Homemade baked cookies are a rare commodity therefore it makes us unique. We love the uniqueness and that is why we do what we do.
We have a passion for uplifting the spirits of not only our customers but also anyone we come in contact with. We understand that most people don’t feel comfortable speaking on the tough times that they are going through, and tend to go through it alone in silence; but the moment they come across a positive message to stay strong and keep going, that’ll motivate them to get through the hardship they are facing. We are trying to do our due diligence in making society and the world a positive place one quote at a time.
Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.
We manufacture our products ourselves from scratch. For our treats we use recipes passed down through our family’s generation. The packaging alone does not come as one, we make that from scratch as well with separate supplies. We’ve learned to minimize our baking to be based solely on our demand, to prevent us from baking more than what is needed.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
A few lessons we had to unlearn were to not prep a day before our sale date, and instead to complete prep a couple days prior. Once we practiced that, we were no longer overwhelmed with getting orders baked and packaged for the customers. Secondly, we taught ourselves that with promotion, instead of sticking to media advertisements, word of mouth goes a long way. So we’d decided to blitz our treats in our city to get our name out there.
Lastly, we’ve had to replace a total of 3 mixers due to the high demand of treats, so we’ve learned that we need to get commercial mixers to handle the amount of baking that we do.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe0i30Uq5L9BOVj-tPTTIfahs9viy4GTHmJl3qs9lBjhbeiSg/viewform
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/cookie_inspo?igshid=NzNkNDdiOGI=
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100076987685004