‘It’s OK to start small’: She knew nothing about decorating cookies; a year later this baker quit her full-time job to scale up

Karissa Todd has taken a family recipe, added in a little hard work and dedication, and baked it into a thriving sugar cookie business, she shared.

After launching Cookie Bliss KC out of her house in 2018, Todd opened a storefront in the Northland, 3518 Northeast Vivion Road, in November, selling her signature soft sugar cookies with vanilla buttercream frosting.

“Everyone’s really good bakers and cooks in my family,” she explained. “Making sugar cookies has always been a holiday tradition. This particular recipe is a family recipe, so my mom and her sisters all made it growing up.”

Cookie Bliss — open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Friday and 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday —  offers those same sugar cookies decorated with creative designs for holidays, special occasions, and sporting and current events, plus large corporate pre-orders with logo printing and delivery in the Kansas City area and shipping outside of it. The team also offers quarterly cookie decorating classes.

On July 9 — National Sugar Cookie Day — Cookie Bliss will offer free blissful bites (mini cookies) to the first 100 customers, 10 percent off orders in the store and online, and a giveaway for a dozen cookies.

A post shared by Cookie Bliss KC (@cookieblisskc)

New venture becomes icing on top

Todd — who worked at Hallmark for 11 years in corporate communications before freelancing — was at a career crossroads in 2018 when a friend suggested she start selling her sugar cookies.

“That one little nudge sparked that thing that has always been in the back of my mind,” she said. “I was just kind of looking for something different and I thought it’d be really fun to run a bakery.”

Todd has already mastered baking the cookies, she noted; it was the decorating that required a little practice, especially because her recipe uses buttercream and a lot of decorated sugar cookies are made with royal icing.

“I always loved baking, but I knew nothing about decorating,” Todd explained. “I was not a decorator. I never considered myself an artist. So that’s what I had to teach myself.”

“I started looking at what you do for cake decorating and how I could blend the two to do it with cookies,” she added. “So we created a little bit of a unique product with that and figured out what worked for me and our recipe.”

After a couple of months, Todd said, she was hooked and sugar cookies quickly became her side hustle. As the business started to take off — a year later — she quit her full-time freelancing and consulting job, and soon after, moved to baking out of a church commercial kitchen. After two years in the commercial kitchen and hiring her first part-time employee, she made the jump to a brick and mortar in November. She now has five part-time employees to help her out.

“I’ve definitely done it step by step, which I’m so glad I did,” she explained. “There’s so many resources that helped me validate that it was an OK thing to do, not to just go sign a lease on day one.”

Having a storefront feels amazing, Todd noted, allowing her more time and space to build connections with customers, plus opening the doors for walk-in orders. 

“There’s definitely a gratifying feeling of building something from nothing — just starting from the ground up and then getting here,” she added. “I definitely work harder and longer hours than I have ever in my entire career — for sure — for less money. That’s just the reality, but the reward is so worth it.”

Cookie Bliss KC’s storefront at 3518 Northeast Vivion Road in Kansas City; photo by Nikki Overfelt Chifalu, Startland News

Help in overcoming barriers

If it weren’t for resources — like Square One Small Business Services at Mid-Continent Public Library, the Small Business Development Center at UMKC, the Ennovation Center in Independence, and Global Entrepreneurship Week hosted by KCSourceLink — Cookie Bliss wouldn’t have made it this far, Todd acknowledged.

Throughout her journey, she has taken advantage of free consulting sessions, classes for new ventures and the entrepreneurial mindset, and business coaching. Plus these resources have helped her learn how to navigate the health department, find available commercial kitchens, make new connections, and believe in herself.

“I knew nothing about the food business,” she explained. “They were really good about helping me recognize the barriers that I put up myself and the assumptions that I was making myself because I’m very risk averse. And they have been really good about helping validate that it’s OK to start small.”

“I would just encourage anybody who’s thinking about starting a business to reach out,” she added, “because there are so many resources that you just don’t realize that are out there that can really help you. So it’s definitely doable, even though it seems really daunting at the beginning.”

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