We recently had the chance to connect with christina jokerst and have shared our conversation below.
Good morning christina, we’re so happy to have you here with us and we’d love to explore your story and how you think about life and legacy and so much more. So let’s start with a question we often ask: What is a normal day like for you right now?
A typical day for me usually begins about 5am.I get up get ready and head over to the bakery. Make a cup of coffee and turn on my ovens. While the ovens are heating up I go over my calendar and orders for the day. Once the ovens are preheated I start taking out all the pans of dough from the fridges and start putting the cookies on baking sheets. Then I start to load the cookies into the ovens. I do this with all the flavors for about 2 hours. Once all the cookies are done I leave them to cool and I start getting butter and eggs out of the fridge and prepping the ingredients to make dough. Depending of how busy we’ve been that week and how many events we have depends on how much dough I make but regardless we make some amount of dough everyday. At 8am my full time person comes in and starts helping me top the cookies and set up the front of store bakers racks and display counter. At 11:00 we open the doors and start serving customers. Sometimes Im up front helping but most of the time Im in the Kitchen making more dough for people to roll, putting cookies into the oven and prepping things. Usually at some point between 12 and 2 I will run home, eat and play with my babies ( two red golden retrievers). At this time I rally try and answer some emails, DMs and messages. I head back to the bakery by three for the afternoon staff coming in. At this point we are usually assessing what we need to make more of for the afternoon, unboxing any packages from suppliers, and sometimes making more dough. I stay at the bakery until 5-7 pm. Then I head home make dinner and walk my dogs. Answer more emails maybe watch a show or sit in my sauna. Go to bed and wake up the next day and do it again!! ALWAYS something to be done.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
My name is Christina Jokerst. I am the owner and Baker at KCookie company. We sell 6oz gourmet New York style cookies. Our cookies are made with European Butter, Belgium Chocolate, hand rolled to 6oz and then aged in the fridge for 48 hours. We Don’t use artificial flavoring or preservatives . Our cookies are literally made from the highest quality butter, sugar. eggs, flour, and chocolate… that’s IT!
Great, so let’s dive into your journey a bit more. Who taught you the most about work?
My grandmother!! I would spend every summer with her. She’s the one who taught me how to bake and how to work hard. She had 7 kids and helped my grandpa run 2 bars, a restaurant, and a launder Matt and still made a hot dinner every night WITH homemade bread.
Was there ever a time you almost gave up?
YUPP… I still have those days!! I started this business with 500 dollars a kitchen aid mixer and ONE oven in my kitchen. Pretty quick we got busy enough that we converted our unfinished basement into a commercial kitchen. We were selling out everyday, selling out at popups, doing wedding and corporate orders and It became clear early on that this was not scalable in our house. So I saved up everything we made and found a location for a brick and mortar. Everything was running smooth until we hired a contractor and things went south. What turned into a promise of a 3 month job start to finish turned into a nightmare. Essentially he took a lot of money and didn’t show up to dot the work. When he did show up the work he did didn’t pass code and had to be redone. Eventually he just stoped showing. We were almost 7 months passed the date we planned to open. No one we were interviewing to take the job over thought they would be able to get it open before the holidays and I was a mess. Thank God we couldn’t get out of the lease bc if we had I would have for sure GAVE UP. But luckily I ended up finding an amazing contractor. He got us open the week before Thanksgiving and it all worked out!
Alright, so if you are open to it, let’s explore some philosophical questions that touch on your values and worldview. What would your closest friends say really matters to you?
Definitely My three Boys . People always want to talk to me about the business or how it’s going so on and so forth and honestly I don’t love talking about that. When people ask what I do I always just say Im a baker or I work in a bakery. But ask me about my kids or dogs and I can talk for hours. My proudest accomplishment and favorite job will always be raising my boys and being there mom.
Before we go, we’d love to hear your thoughts on some longer-run, legacy type questions. What is the story you hope people tell about you when you’re gone?
I hope that when they think about the important events in their lives they think about us and the small part we’ve had in those moments. We have some crazy loyal customers who have used us for so many big events in their lives and I sometimes have to remind myself what a unique honor it is to be trusted with some of these things. We have customers who have used us for engagements, weddings , baby showers, gender reveals. We’ve been part of some of the happiest moments and our cookies have been sent to cheer people up in some of the hardest and saddest moments of their lives. I want people to smile when they think about us and remember and the first time they had our cookies and the memories tat come with that.
Contact Info:
- Website: [email protected]
- Instagram: KCookie Company
