When Kiarah Harris first entered the building that would eventually house her business, the first thing she noticed was the carpet.
It was “raggedy” and had an odd smell. The dark red, navy blue and light gray walls added to the gloomy atmosphere of the vacant unit.
Kiarah Harris prepares buttercream icing at The Cookie Club. Harris attended culinary school and has been “doing my own thing” since 2017.
But Harris saw potential in the dreary space, and by the time she was finished, the dark color scheme and smelly carpet was replaced with white walls, bright blue and yellow accents and vinyl tile floors.
In November 2019, after about two years of renovation, the building that once housed a drugstore and later a TV store officially opened as The Cookie Club in Mexico, Missouri.
It is a dessert shop and bakery that sells a variety of treats, including cookie cakes, cake parfaits, ice cream and, of course, cookies. It also offers custom cookie orders and decorating classes.
Icing and other baking components lay on a counter in the Cookie Club kitchen. Kiarah Harris makes her own buttercream icing at The Cookie Club, used to decorate cookies and cupcakes.
Although her business isn’t the only sweet shop in town, Harris believes it contributes something original.
“We have Dairy Queen, or you can get your own snacks that you put together at the grocery store, or you can go to Walmart, or you can go to Sonic and get their shakes,” she said.
“But it's nothing like something that is local, that we're putting together with local ingredients.”
Kiarah Harrispours powdered sugar into a mixer while making homemade buttercream icing. “(My first) business plan in high school was called ‘creative cookie,’” Harris said.
Jennifer Barnett, a teacher at Mexico Middle School, said she heard about The Cookie Club in its early days when other downtown Mexico businesses began to promote the new bakery.
Now, she said she and her husband enjoy bringing their two kids to the shop for a treat and have ordered specially made cookies for two special occasions.
"I am a born and raised Mexicoan and I don’t ever remember our town having a true bakery," Barnett said in an e-mail. "If you wanted specialty cakes or cookies, you had to go to Columbia or a surrounding town that had a bakery."
Kiarah Harris and Belle Graves talk over a sheet of unbaked cookies at The Cookie Club, which opened in October 2019 in Mexico, Mo. “We’re going full steam ahead,” Harris said.
The Cookie Club is full of nods to mid-Missouri and testaments to Harris’ hard work. She stocks tubs from the Ice Cream Factory, which started in Eldon and has a second location in Jefferson City, and uses it to make ice cream sandwiches, milkshakes or serve just plain scoops.
Some decor inside the shop was upcycled from items that were left in the building when Harris acquired it. A few tables were purchased from Confetti Craft Co., a Columbia craft and cocktail bar, when it went out of business.
Harris then shellacked and painted the tables herself. She even painted the ceilings and some of the walls.
Harris always wanted to own a bakery. She had worked in food service for most of her life and attended pastry school at Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts, where she spent two years taking classes in her native Chicago and, later, Atlanta.
She moved to Columbia in 2015 before relocating to Mexico, where her husband, Chad, grew up, in 2017.
“The first mock business plan we made from beginning to end was called Create A Cookie, and I wanted to ship cookie dough to people,” Harris said.
“I didn't really do anything with it. I set it down for so long. And then, I wanted to open up a bakery. I wanted to do breads and biscuits and foods and pastries and everything under the sun.”
Belle Graves carries a sheet of unbaked cookies through The Cookie Club kitchen in Mexico, Mo. Graves has worked at the Cookie Club for about four months. “I never thought I’d end up in the kitchen, I just sort of fell into the job,” Graves said.
But Chad encouraged her to choose a specialty for her bakery, so she thought back to Create A Cookie. After looking over the old business plan and consulting her high school business teacher, Harris settled on cookies as her signature item.
In addition to classics such as chocolate chip, peanut butter and decorated sugar cookies, The Cookie Club also stocks red velvet cookies stuffed with cream cheese and a creation called “Bettermint” which has Andes mints, peppermint and semi-sweet chocolate chunks.
As The Cookie Club approaches its first anniversary, Harris is thinking about the future. She’s working on updating the bakery’s website, developing new cookie flavors and getting into wholesale.
Now that she’s starting to settle into her role as a business owner, her main goal is finding a “core team” that can help her run the bakery as she seeks to grow both her shop, her family and herself.
Kiarah Harris prepares a large cookie for decoration. Harris owns a bakery in Mexico, Mo., called The Cookie Club.
“It still felt like a hobby even though it was a business because it wasn't in a full stage of, ‘Hey, the lights have to stay on,’” she said. “Balancing my life still, making sure that I'm there for my husband and my child … I've probably grown over this last year more than I could have if I was doing anything else.”
The Link LonkSeptember 17, 2020 at 06:00PM
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The Cookie Club: A dessert shop and bakery with trays of cookies, cakes and other treats - Columbia Missourian
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