The Commercial Appeal - Go Memphis
Makeda’s cookies: 21 years of ‘butteriffic’ goodness
Butteriffic love. These two words are at the heart of Makeda’s Homemade Butter Cookies. This small family business was born 21 years ago from love.
Pamela and Maurice Hill named their bakery after their niece Makeda. Her smiling face is on every package.
“Makeda passed away in 1997 after losing her battle with leukemia,” Pamela Hill said. “We named the bakery in her honor to keep her memory alive.”
The bakery celebrated its 21st anniversary Sept. 18. On Oct. 10, it has a big celebration planned in honor of what would have been Makeda’s 30th birthday.
“We do a party every year for Makeda’s birthday,” Hill said. “Her birthday is Oct.11, but we will be celebrating it this year on Oct. 10 since we are closed on Sundays.”
Expect specials on cookies as well as other surprise festivities such as food trucks.
The butteriffic cookies
Makeda’s is known for its old-fashioned butter cookies. These beloved cookies are sold at Makeda’s two bakery locations — one on Airways Boulevard and one Downtown on Second Street — as well as in more than 50 grocery stores.
When asked why she thinks Memphians love Makeda’s butter cookies so much, Hill said that’s easy to answer: “Memphis City Schools used to bake these cookies from scratch every day.”
2370 Airways Blvd. and 488 S. Second. Cookies are also available in local grocery stores.
9 a.m.-7 p.m. Monday-saturday; closed Sunday
At a glance Makeda’s Homemade Butter Cookies
Where:
(901) 745-2667 makedascookies.com
“Everyone loved the butter cookie,” she said. “OK, maybe not everyone, but the vast majority of students loved the smell of the butter cookies down the hall, and of course they loved eating them as well. I know I did!”
Makeda’s cookies are made from scratch with real butter — and lots of that love that comes from Hill’s family.
The butter cookies, which come in two sizes, are also used in the bakery’s frozen lemon pie and banana pudding. Hill calls them “butteriffic” when she describes the flavor. The bakery also offers 15 additional flavors of homemade cookies, including Hill’s favorite — Oatmeal Raisin.
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A bit of Makeda’s sweet history
The Hills launched the bakery from the 880-square-foot space at 2370 Airways Blvd. on Sept. 18, 1999. Soon word of the delicious butter cookies spread, and the couple launched a grocery retail package.
A second bakery was opened in 2015 at 488 S. Second St. in Downtown Memphis. Substantially larger at 2,400 square feet, the Downtown location now houses the production of the grocery store cookies. Hill said the Downtown location has introduced Makeda’s cookies to tourists, helping grown their mail-order business.
Over the years, Makeda’s has grown into a family affair. Maurice can be found at the original location on Air
Pamela and Maurice Hill, owner of Makeda’s Homemade Butter Cookies, have been in business for 21 years. Photographed Wednesday, Sept. 30, at their Airways Boulevard location in Memphis. ways. The Hills’ daughters operate the Downtown store. Tamika Heard runs the company’s social media, and Raven Winton manages the grocery store side of the business. Pamela Hill bounces between both locations.
“I feel so blessed to be in a business that is still thriving right now,” said Hill, adding cookies may just be what everyone needs right now.
Jennifer Chandler is the Food & Dining reporter at The Commercial Appeal. She can be reached at jennifer.chandler@commercialappeal.com and you can follow her on Twitter and Instagram at @cookwjennifer.
In a bid to entice coronavirus-wary families and friends back into cinemas, Malco is offering a “private screening” program to enable patrons to reserve an auditorium to watch a movie without the risk, so to speak, of being in the company of potentially unhealthy strangers.
Dubbed “Malco Select,” the initiative rolls out at the Paradiso in East Memphis and the Collierville Cinema Grill & MXT, as well as at the Razorback in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and the Grandview in Madison, Mississippi.
“Guests will be able to choose a location, select a film from the current inventory and reserve an auditorium to have a private screening for up to 20 people,” according to a Malco press release. The rate is $100 or $150, depending on the movie.
The availability of movies and times are on the Malco website, malco.com. An auditorium is “reserved” online, just as tickets are bought in advance online. This is in contrast to the group bookings for more than 20 moviegoers made by church groups, birthday party hosts, and others, which can be made for any negotiated time, and which require the customer to deal with a Malco representative.
The innovation is an indication of the challenges faced by cinema chains in the era of social distancing, as cities “reopen” and businesses emerge from the government-mandated shutdowns of the early months of the pandemic.
Malco began reopening its Memphisarea theaters Aug. 21, and now all but the Majestic, Bartlett and Cordova cinemas are back in business. The shutdown had enabled the company to complete millions in dollars in renovations in some theaters. Old seats were replaced with roomier, cushioned recliners with footrests at many auditoriums, and the “MXT” auditorium added to the Collierville Cinema showcases an Imax-sized screen and state-of-the-art sound.
New MXT auditorium in at the Malco Collierville Towne Cinema Grill & Bar. The MXT officially opened with the movie “Unhinged” on August 21.
However, the fingers-crossed optimism that accompanied the initial reopenings proved ill-founded, and business has been slow. Most of the theaters have eliminated weekday matinees, and some cinemas, such as the Studio on the Square, have cut back and are now shut down on weekdays altogether, running Friday through Sunday only. The bright spot is the drive-in, which — being an outdoor experience with built-in social distancing — has continued to draw crowds.
The pandemic offers an indirect as well as a direct explanation for low theater attendance. It’s not just that people are wary of theaters; it’s that the theaters so far have offered wan competition for the offerings on Netflix and other services.
Since the Sept. 3 of opening of “Dark Knight” director Christopher Nolan’s
“Tenet,” the Hollywood studios have left cinemas hanging, delaying the “Wonder Woman” sequel from Oct. 2 to Christmas or — in the case of Disney’s live-action “Mulan” and its filmed version of the “Hamilton” stage play — skipping theaters in favor of pay-per-view and streaming options.
For some time, the next “blockbuster” slated to open in cinemas has been “No Time to Die,” which was due Nov. 25. But Friday, MGM delivered the grim news to theater owners that the James Bond epic was being pushed forward to Easter weekend, which means that about the only remaining big-studio releases between now and the Christmas holidays are a pair of animated films, Disney’s “Soul” and the Dreamworks sequel, “The Croods: A New Age.”
In the meantime, the Malco multi
plexes are filled with independent movies that pre-pandemic would have been booked onto a single screen at the Ridgeway or Studio, alongside $5-aticket bargain revivals of “The Muppet Movie,” “Minions” and “The Empire Strikes Back.” A cinephile might cheer a world in which Miranda July’s latest, “Kajillionaire,” is still on four local screens in its second week while Brandon Cronenberg’s artsy shocker “Possessor” opens on five, but the reality is few people are finding these movies, wherever they are.
Some niche releases have done well. The big draw at the Paradiso last weekend was “Break the Silence: The Movie,” a concert-tour documentary about the South Korean “boy band” BTS, which attracted large numbers of teenage girls, who learned about the release through the band’s social-media fan accounts.