Latwanna Clark was trying to help people be happy when she was working a family counselor. After some consideration, she realized she could accomplish that mission by selling cookies alongside her daughter.
Clark and her 7-year-old daughter, Kay, own Kay’s Cookiez, a brick-and-mortar cookie shop in Mesquite. They sell cookies, cupcakes, cakes and other treats at the shop and offer delivery through UberEats.
“When I was a family therapist, I wanted to bring people joy. I wanted to find their joy and their happy again,” Clark said, adding that the process can take a long time through therapy. “These cookies will give people that immediate sense of joy. And I get to feel that. And that’s what I really wanted to do. I want people to be happy.”
The mother-daughter duo run the entire shop, doing “everything from A to Z,” including baking treats, take orders, greet customers and handing out cookies. They have one other employee who started this month, Clark said.
Before opening the shop in March, the duo sold cookies and treats at a kiosk in Mesquite’s Town East Mall for six months. They also had a brief stint at a mall in Atlanta, where they used to live.
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Clark started thinking about opening a dessert shop when she realized her old job didn’t quite fit what she had set out to accomplish. She used to work as a hairdresser before she was a family therapist, but she felt limited in the scope of her work.
She remembers feeling like she was “trying to save the world,” but she worried about how her absence while working long hours might affect her daughter.
“I didn’t want to go back and do something where I couldn’t work with my baby anymore,” Clark said. “And then I started thinking, like, ‘What can we do that’s fun for her?’ Something that she would love that I could enjoy, too.”
The idea of cookies came to mind, Clark said, describing Kay as a ‘cookie monster’ who has eaten 17 cookies in one sitting.
The shop is also an ongoing lesson about grit and self-empowerment for her daughter, she said.
“I want her to see how she started this from nothing, literally nothing,” she said. “I just want her to have the self determination, to be able to be self-sustaining. I would like to see her grow into a little mini CEO.”
Clark said she doesn’t know if she needs to teach her daughter these lessons, though, because Kay is extremely bright and has a strong sense of self.
“I can’t stop her,” Clark said. “She is something different.”
Kay’s Cookiez, 1100 N. Town East Blvd., Suite 104.
The Link LonkMay 21, 2021 at 03:59AM
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A ‘cookie monster,’ counseling and joy: the story of a mother-daughter bakery in Mesquite - The Dallas Morning News
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