| CITY OF ATE | t Dish Amber Brown pipes frosting on cookies at the Addison Cookie Society location. Nathan Hunsinger A Pinch of Grit Being lean and flexible let some restaurants survive — and thrive — during the pandemic. What they learned will set a new path forward. BY LAUREN DREWES DANIELS the Houston Texans, she didn’t know any- one in their new city. So she baked. “It was kind of my intro,” Marissa says A 18 18 with a smile and shrug. “‘I made these cook- ies for you,’ and I made friends.” “That’s how it started. I was like, ‘Hey, you can sell this,’” husband Jeff adds. She made many friends, and her cookies are amazing: thick but light, crumbly but not dry. The flavors, like Pop-Tarts and lemon, are spot on. In fact, you may never eat an- other Pop-Tart after having one of her cook- ies. These are best-friends-for-life cookies. Marissa and Jeff started dating while at the University of Illinois, where she played soccer and earned a business degree in mar- keting. He played football and studied sports management. Her cookies started as a friendly bribe and grew to become a small business, at first through mail order. The Al- lens used Instagram and tapped into their network of friends and family to tell their story and push online orders. t first, Marissa Allen baked cookies to make friends. When her husband, who played pro- fessional football, was traded by the Kansas City Chiefs to Things soon got busy, and Cookie Society was born. They rented a commercial kitchen space, and Marissa would drop their kids off at school in the morning, hustle to prep and bake cookies, then package them in a tidy box before shipping them off. She would Face- Time clients when the boxes arrived to check on the state of the cookies after the trip. They moved to the Dallas area after Jeff’s career as an offensive lineman ended in 2019, and in March 2020 they were prepar- ing to open a storefront in Frisco. “We thought this would legitimize our shipping business,” Marissa says. “We shipped cookies — we were really good at it. Then we had our own kitchen.” A store was the next step. Then the pandemic flipped the retail and service industry on its head, washing away the standard business practices. The Allens faced running a brick-and-mortar shop as their shipping business skyrocketed thanks to customers who sought indulgences to while away the hours stuck at home. The first day they moved into their store, they had more than 100 boxes stacked in the hall- way that needed to be packed and shipped. Dan Bui and Connie Cheng faced a simi- lar situation in the Bishop Arts District, where they were preparing to open the Ca- jun-Asian restaurant and bar Krio. The two had previously worked together at Sisu Up- town, but this was their first time owning their own establishment. They had money tied up in their new spot, plus workers rely- ing on a salary. Small business owners across the nation had to adapt quickly. Some found clever ways to either stay in business or find new revenue streams. For example, when downtown workers were sent home, Sloane’s Corner in the Trammel Crow Cen- ter lost many of its daytime customers. In- stead of sitting idle and laying off its workers, Sloane’s Corner created Pizza Leila, a virtual kitchen that delivered piz- zas to downtown residents, reemploying all its kitchen staff. Since the pandemic, Pizza Leila has endured. Some restaurateurs tried ghost restau- rants, offering takeout and to-go meals, pay- ing for a commercial kitchen but passing on the expensive fixtures that go along with a dining room. Among them was Greg Tier- ney, who wanted to bring more Detroit-style pizza to the North Texas market. He started Motor City Pizza in a ghost kitchen in Octo- ber 2020, focusing on delivery, and now he’s opening a full-service restaurant. Supply chains, labor, ingredients and lo- gistics were all in turmoil. So, how did some in the food and service industry go beyond merely navigating the pandemic and thrive? There was no playbook covering the eco- nomics of social distancing. Adapting on the fly was key. With a boatload of determination and in- ventiveness, entrepreneurs like the Allens, Bui and Cheng learned lessons during the pandemic that the best MBA programs couldn’t provide, and those lessons endure as the pandemic recedes. “W e lived here,” Marissa says. In 2020, Cookie Society was open only until 4 p.m., when the Allens would send their crew home and prep cookies themselves until midnight. “I’d cry. We’d open the fridge, and it’d be empty,” Marissa says of their cookie dough stock for the next day. Beyond trying to keep up with shipping orders, they were running boxes of cook- ies to cars outside in the parking lot; they MONTH XX–MONTH XX, 2014 SEPTEMBER 15–21, 2022 DALLAS OBSERVER DALLAS OBSERVER | CLASSIFIED | MUSIC | DISH | MOVIES | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | FEATURE | SCHUTZE | UNFAIR PARK | CONTENTS | CLASSIFIED | MUSIC | DISH | CULTURE | UNFAIR PARK | CONTENTS dallasobserver.comdallasobserver.com
