Spotted: Mimi's Cookie Bar

This week we got to sit down with Mimi Kurz, owner and founder of Mimi's Cookie Bar, to take a peek into the life of the only cookie bar and froyo spot in town. Scope it!

So give us your background and the history behind Mimi’s Cookie Bar

Well, I’ve always liked to bake, and I’ve always baked cookies. Pretty much any occasion I could get, I’d bake them. My signature was the Dad’s Coconut Chocolate Chip so that’s pretty much the cookie that started the whole company. My friends were saying, “This is so good! You should be doing something with this!” so I kind of just got inspiration from them and the people I was giving cookies to all the time that were bringing them to work or parties or whatever.

I was working full time at Roxy, and we were having a lot of layoffs a couple of years ago. I didn’t get laid off, but it got me thinking what would I do if I did. So that’s when I really started to think about it and technically start the company in November 2009. That’s when the idea, the name, and everything else came about and it kind of went from there. I didn’t know anything about the food industry…how do I do this, you know? It was a lot of research, and after I figured out I could start it online, rent space in a commercial kitchen, and bake whenever I got orders…that’s pretty much what launched the e-commerce website in September 2010 and led me to move here to open up a location.

Besides being a cookie bar, what sets your business apart from the other coffee shops and cafes in town?

Well, we are a cookie bar [laughs]. We’re also not really a coffee shop. We do offer black coffee, but we don’t do espresso or any of that stuff. Our old fashioned hot chocolate is definitely different than everybody else’s – it’s made from scratch and stirred instead of just steamed milk poured over chocolate syrup, and people have been tasting the difference in that. I had someone call yesterday and ask, “What time are you open until? We heard you have the best hot chocolate!” I had never even seen them before so I don’t know if they’re visiting or live up here.

We also do catering for parties and weddings if they want cookies. A lot of coffee shops don’t really do that so we’re kind of like a bakery in that sense. Also, we only use organic, natural, fair trade ingredients. I don’t really think anyone else in town, maybe Stellar Brew, really commits to that. Pretty much 98% of our ingredients are organic. There are only a couple of things that we make that are all-natural because the price difference is just ridiculous. But I carefully check all the ingredients and make sure where they come from.

We also have vegan and gluten-free [cookies]. Pretty much every cookie we have we can make it in vegan, or gluten-free, or vegan gluten-free. And we offer vegan and gluten-free every day and we’re starting to offer vegan gluten-free once a week.

Our dog cookies are also really good and only have 5 ingredients, which are all organic because a lot of dogs have problems eating certain treats. Some people even eat our dog treats and say they taste way better than other companies who actually market dog treats to dogs and humans. 

So the response from the people in town has been pretty good then?

Yeah. I still get the straggler people who say, “I haven’t been in here yet!” For example, there were some people who came in last week and said, “Oh you’re so eco-friendly! I can’t believe we haven’t been in here!” So I’m sure people are busy with their routines and schedules. They haven’t had the chance to come in, and they don’t really escape from their routines some times so I know it’s hard to break out of that and try something new, but I hope that word is getting around that we have awesome cookies, hot cocoa and frozen yogurt!

People have been calling in orders, too, like a lady who called in from Lone Pine (about two and a half hours away). She’s frequented here a couple of times since we’ve opened, and she ordered four dozen peanut butter chocolate pretzel ones for Thanksgiving because she wanted her whole family to try them. She made her husband drive all the way here to get them! So I’m really stoked when people make an effort like that because it shows they really like our cookies. I had someone else call yesterday from Fish Lake – I don’t even know where that is, somewhere past Bishop – about our dog cookies. Not a lot of people know, but we make dog cookies and donate 50% of the profit to Save a Life No Kill Rescue Shelter just north of Los Angeles.

What’s a typical day look like for you?

A typical day…I usually don’t get here until around 10, which is nice. Right now we open at 11. I’ll probably start getting here earlier, probably not until 9, once we’re super busy. Some times I’m baking until late the night before. It just depends how busy we were that day. So I get in here, start baking, usually put the yogurt in the machine, which doesn’t take very long. After I have everything out in the case and the yogurts all done, I’ll Facebook our flavors because we have a lot of followers on Facebook and Twitter that depend on those updates to know the yogurt and cookie flavors every day. Then it’s just basically hanging out here, seeing how busy we are and trying to get people to come in.

I do all the updating of the website myself, so things like Cookie of the Month I’m always updating. I’m also constantly updating the website with menu items like all of our vegan flavors on the custom cookies page. Some times I’m taking photos in here for the website or doing online orders, depending if we have any.

Do you ever get time to go riding?

Not right now. I’m hoping after Christmas it should be a little less crazy. I don’t even have a pass yet because all of my money went into the cookie bar! But my boyfriend Delaney, who works at the mountain, gets vouchers so I’m hoping to use some of those. One of my good friends just quit Roxy a couple of weeks ago, moved up here and will be working for me. She’s my only employee and is pretty much going to be working for me on my days off.

What’s your favorite flavor of yogurt and favorite cookie?

My favorite yogurt flavor is coffee or chocolate. Always has been. I like when I put them together because then I can swirl them! The Yia-Yia cookies are probably my number one favorite.  Yia yia means “grandma” in Greek (I’m Greek) and my yia-yia always made these amazing cookies when we were growing up for every holiday and every occasion. So we just called them yia-yia cookies because we couldn’t say the real name. It’s like an Italian wedding cookie or a Russian tea cake. We only sell them in here and don’t ship them because they’re too fragile. I also like the Dad’s Coconut Chocolate Chip and the Chubby Dougie.

Any big plans for the future? Dreams?

We hopefully want to expand to more yogurt machines so we can have more flavors and be more of a yogurt shop, but that’s a very expensive plan because yogurt machines are ridiculously expensive and a lot to maintain.

I definitely want to do more catering and weddings because I think we’re great for that. We’ve done some in the past – weddings and sales meetings for companies down south. I just hope they’re going to keep us around because cookies are a great dessert. They’re an easy, grab and go snack for any sort of event like that. You don’t need to sit down and eat it with a fork like you do with a cake.

If we’re doing well in a few years, we might want to open a new location. At this point, I don’t know where it would be. We did decide that if we were to open another location it would only be one of the five original owners that could run it. We don’t want to franchise because we don’t want to have that vibe where you go in and it’s not personable or family friendly and you can’t relax. If you go into Golden Spoon down south there are high school kids working there. It’s not personal at all - you get your yogurt and you leave. I want people to hang out here! So if we open another location it would be run by me, Delaney, Kimmy, Chris or my brother, who is also an investor, but I would most likely stay in this one.

This would also do really well down in Huntington, Newport or Encinitas or somewhere like that. Then maybe by that time we’re expanding to sponsoring surfers on our team so we can go with another vibe that would match the environment. Or we could open up in another mountain town like somewhere in Colorado or Tahoe. Hopefully one day. That would be pretty sweet to have more locations. And I want more business for online.

Any shout outs?

Thanks to Delaney, my brother Doug, my dad, Kimmy and Chris, everyone on the team and everyone who comes in here! Visit the website www.mimiscookiebar.com, www.facebook.com/mimiscookiebar, www.facebook.com/mimiofmimiscookiebar and www.twitter.com/mimiscookiebar