We recently connected with Lacee Brown and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Lacee, thanks for joining us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

At Brown Box, we wholeheartedly embrace everyone—both locals and visitors—as an integral part of our extended Kanab family. Our mission is to cultivate authentic connections that enrich lives and ignite inspiration. We achieve this by: Creating a secure, welcoming, and cozy environment that beckons you to stay awhile.
Spreading love by sharing our delicious homemade recipes.
Introducing visitors to the vibrant and unique Kanab lifestyle.
Honoring and celebrating the cherished traditions and craftsmanship of our community and fellow Utah families.
Together, we create a place where bonds are formed, stories are shared, and the essence of Kanab is celebrated in every interaction and every bite.

As a family owned/run business we believe in the importance of family and tradition. The Brown Box dream began as a place of belonging and ownership for my cousin Nathan Brown. Nate, who has down syndrome, loves meeting new people, making connections, and leaving them inspired. He has worked with Bobbie, his aide, since high school. Bobbie is an ice cream creator extraordinaire. She has been making homemade ice cream for 40 years and invites a new family over every week to enjoy her talent. Our business story started with the purchase of an ice cream machine to turn Bobbie’s skills and Nate’s charisma into an ice cream parlor in the small town of Kanab. It has since evolved to be much more than ice cream, but our goal has always been that walking into Brown Box feels like coming home.

Our family roots run deep in the red dirt of Kanab. Growing up, visiting Grandma and Grandpa was always a delight. When you walked in, it smelled like fresh baked cookies or sweet rolls and we all gathered around the dining room table to laugh and enjoy homemade meals and the good company. At the center of our small shop is a large dining room table where we have watched many families, including our own, do exactly what we always loved doing at our grandparents house. A picture of our grandparents sits on the fireplace mantle to remind everyone who walks in to never forget where they came from and the legacy they are leaving.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

We are Emily Koelliker and Lacee Brown, best friend cousins, as we referred to ourselves growing up.

Emily grew up in Kanab Utah while Lacee was a little further north in Orem Utah, but we always looked forward to an opportunity to get together and get into some trouble. Neither of us have a background in food or even business for that matter, but somehow we ended up here. Emily had recently moved back to Kanab with her young family and was feeling something prompting her to put the ice cream machine her dad had bought 5 years prior to use and get an ice cream shop up and running. At the time Lacee lived in Heber City Utah, a decade deep into her career in sport medicine. After the death of their beloved grandpa, she began to feel a pull from the red hills of Kanab where he had spent the majority of his life. When we met up at the funeral the Brown Box dream began to take form. Lacee grew enjoying baking with her grandma and dad, while Emily grew up watching and working alongside her entrepreneur father. Our different strengths and focuses made us a prime team for our new adventure.

Brown Box Bakeshop is a small cafe in a quaint tourist town in Southern Utah. You can come to relax and re-energize yourself after a day of exploring all that the area has to offer. We serve comfort food like you could only get at grandmas. Grilled cheese, soup, salads, cookies, sweet rolls, and of course our homemade ice cream. Our signature dish is a customizable hot, fresh baked cookie skillet with a large scoop of homemade ice cream topped with made from scratch caramel and fudge. We call in the Kanookie, the kanab-cookie. Its unlike any dessert you have ever had and has been known to be the pinnacle of many vacations.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

As a new business, opened in Aug 2022, managing our team has taken a bit of a back seat while we learned/figured out, literally everything else. Now with some experience under our belt we are turning our attention to our employees. Owning a business in a small town comes with unique staffing issues. The pool is small and the options are slim. We feel blessed to have the amazing staff that we do, but the turnaround is quick and we want to ensure our employees see Brown Box not only as a great place to work, but as a place that taught them valuable life lessons. We spent a significant amount of time nailing down our business’ core values. We felt it important to have clear easy to remember values. We want our employees to remember them and live by them, not only at work, but in their personal lives as well. We picked 3 values and then explained how each of those can be practiced on a personal level, with their team at work, and with our customers. We focus on one value at each staff meeting, talk about how they can exemplify that value, get their input on ways to improve and how it will help them, and then we set goals for the month based on those values. Our core values shape the conversation in our bi-annual employee check-ins. Our employees know exactly what is expected of them and do a great job at fulfilling those responsibilities. We also believe that for a team to work well together they need to feel like their leader truly cares. Find ways to show them that you care about them as a person.

We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.

We take a lot of pride in our products. Everything is handmade from scratch. If you order a grilled cheese sandwich, the gooey delicious cheese was hand-grated that morning. Fancy a scoop of ice cream? It was made within the week in the back of our shop by Nate and Bobbie. Hand-making all our products is a challenge, the product has to be the same everyday, no matter who makes it. We learned quickly the importance of clear and concise processes as well as thorough training. As a small business it is easy to want to do it all yourself. You know the saying “If you want something done right, do it yourself”? Well, like I am sure every small business owner learns as quickly as we did, that saying DOES NOT work in a small business. Trying to do everything yourself to make sure it is up to par, will burn you out before you have even had a chance to come up for air. Take the time to focus on processes, procedures, and training. I wish this was something I understood when we first opened our small business.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.brownboxkanab.com/
• Instagram: brownboxkanab
• Facebook: Brown Box Bakeshop
• Yelp: Brown Box Bakeshop