Exploring Life & Business with Elee Hampton of Quarantine Cookie

Today we’d like to introduce you to Elee Hampton.

Hi Elee, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I had been working in NYC in March 2020 when all of the cities restaurants were shut down because of Covid-19. So like many other food service workers in NY, I lost my job. Since so many people had just lost their jobs and were not able to work, I wasn’t able to get unemployment assistance in result of the system being so overwhelmed! I needed an income, and I had plenty of time, so I decided to turn things around.

The idea of Quarantine Cookie occurred to me in the middle of a midnight snack craving. My fiancé and I had been craving cookies, so I was mixing up a batch when I realized that I could be shipping and selling these cookies nationwide to friends and family. After a couple of months of baking out of my tiny apartment in NYC my fiancé and I moved to Kansas City. From there, we’ve been growing our business in Kansas City, offering delivery, pickup, and shipping nationwide. We’ve now started offering rotating flavors every month with specials for holidays!

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I wish I could say there were no challenges, but where is the fun in that! When I first started QC, I had put out a general interest post and it got a lot larger response than I was prepared for. The apartment that I was living in had a TINY fridge and oven so I was only able to bake off about four cookies at a time… max. It was rough! My original interest post had gotten at least 40 or so orders right off the bat from friends and family. So I struggled to get those first orders done and shipped in a timely manner with the oven situation! Along with that, our first way of packaging was not great. So we quickly learned the best way to send cookies in the mail, thankfully! Since then we’ve changed our packaging a lot and adapted our ordering system to prevent those problems in the future….and thankfully have a larger oven!

We’ve been impressed with Quarantine Cookie, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Quarantine Cookie specializes in small-batch gourmet cookies. Our cookies are all mixed, baked, and packaged to order. We pride ourself in providing truly amazing cookies and making sure they’re flavorful and have perfectly balanced taste. When I say our cookies are huge, I mean it, each of our cookies is nearly a 1/2 pound! We offer our OG Chocolate Chip cookie that is loaded with chocolate chips and then three other flavors that rotate each month. Along with that, we offer custom orders, where if a customer wants a specific flavor of cookie when it isn’t offered or any other baked items (cake, brownies, gluten-free, etc.) they can email us and we can put something together for the customer.

Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?
Perhaps just how people can find us! Since we are a scratch kitchen orders need to be placed ahead of time on our website to then be picked up, delivered, or shipped. Our website is www.quarantinecookie.co. Our turnaround time is about 24 hours or less, so we can satisfy those cookie cravings! Our Instagram is @quarantinecookie_ and Facebook is Quarantine Cookie.

Contact Info:

• Email: Quarantinecookiee@gmail.com
• Website: www.quarantinecookie.co
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/quarantinecookie_
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/quarantinecookie/
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/quarantine-cookie-kansas-city

Image Credits
Elee Hampton and Emma Milligan