Cookie Cookie Ice Cream’s special needs workers sling sweet treats
Typical ice cream shops don’t excite Connie Feda. They won’t have what she really wants. Two cookies, home baked according to her mother’s recipes, with homemade ice cream between them, doled out in two 2-ounce scoops, rather than one 4-ounce scoop, for optimal smooshing — that’s her idea of perfection.
So, when her son Addison Fox moved on from his high-level software career, her family huddled up and created Kennedy’s newest sweet stop, Cookie Cookie Ice Cream.
At only $6.16 per massive Connie-imagined dessert, almost endless flavor combinations and a full coffee bar menu to suit the morning crowd, the concept alone will send a steady stream of customers through the door.
But they’ll return because of who’s on the other side of the counter: a cadre of special needs cookie and ice cream experts, taught by Connie, Addison and a 70-year-old family recipe book.
Celebration Day
Sept. 27 was grand opening day. Although the shop had been open unofficially for the previous 18 days, that morning’s energy made it feel like the first.
Connie made sure everyone caught a glimpse of her “grand opening shoes,” with soles that look like ice cream cones and Mary Jane-style uppers painted to look like dripping ice cream with sprinkles.
Her ice cream and doughnut leggings echoed those of her daughter Hannah, which where stamped with ice cream sandwiches, just as the lavender glitter rims of Connie’s glasses matched the deep purple of Hannah’s pixie-cut hair.
Hannah Fox, 23, refers to herself as the shop’s barista, proudly pouring customers’ “first cup of the day.” She also bakes cookies “all day long,” created the store’s logo-ed cup, cleans and more.
Tasks such as making change or using the cash register don’t come easy to Hannah,
who has Down syndrome, but it doesn’t matter. Hannah has more important things to do.
She doesn’t forget a face. Although the store had been open only for a short time, she already recognized repeat customers and welcomed them back as such. She extends that “inherent friendliness,” as her mom describes it, to everyone who walks in the door. Sometimes she expresses it as ice cream sandwich suggestions.
Chocolate crinkle cookies with strawberry ice cream is her favorite combination, though her newest brainstorm might take its place: lemon cookies with “Caribbean dream” ice cream — think ambrosia salad minus the marshmallows — all drizzled with chocolate.
“The cookies make you feel like you aren’t alone in this world,” she says.
After finishing a customer’s raspberry latte, Hannah scurried to the front of the store, where her mother, step-dad Ken Feda, Addison and a few other team members were ready to take pictures and cut a ceremonial ribbon provided by Duquesne University’s Small Business Development Center. It guided the family members as they drew up a business plan, sought funding and became properly licensed.
Although advisers at the center always feel fulfilled by helping entrepreneurs, this particular opening was different.
“There’s a deeper sense of accomplishment when you see young adults with special needs come and are learning what it really takes to run a business or engage in working,” said senior business consultant Douglas Harding. “There’s a purpose behind it here. Not just a profit purpose but a humanitarian and societal purpose. And anyone who comes in here to buy ice cream is contributing to that purpose.”
Ice cream soup
Ittook about three years to reach that day. Addison’s success at a large software
‘it’s a good job’
firm in Wisconsin led to a managerial job that he never wanted. While on a trip to Iceland, he saw a man selling soup, every day, until his popular soup ran out. Then, the manwent home.
It was a lifestyle that spoke to Addison, so he shared it with his family, in the hope of working with them.
The family had always cooked and baked together, following the example of Connie’s mother, whose 1950s-era cookbook was so revered, it was mentioned in her will and then distributed as digital copies to the entire family.
But those pages didn’t contain nearly enough about soup to mimic the Icelandic soup stand, so they stuck to what they knew.
Connie once ran a Baskin-Robbins store, successfully led Hannah’s Girl Scouts troop to multiple city of Pittsburgh Gingerbread House Competition awards and, with Hannah, was a part of the longest wedding cookie table entry recognized by Guinness World Records. And she also had some strong opinions on how to make ice cream sandwiches.
Churn
They knew nothing about making ice cream until January 2020, when the Feda-Foxes traveled to Happy Valley for a 72-hour ice cream intensive — from machines to flavorings and chemistry — taught by folks at Penn State Creamery.
Cookie Cookie Ice Cream uses an Italian gelato machine to create “ice cream with gelato sensibilities,”
as Addison describes it, meaning a denser frozen dessert with more intense flavors.
Some are classic gelato flavors, such as stracciatella. Others are Addison’s creations, such as Mulled Apple Cider, made by cooking off cider with mulling spices for hours. Blue Moon, which tastes like refined Fruity Pebbles and looks like blue Play-Doh, is a Midwestern standby and a kid favorite.
Any of the dozen or so more flavors available at once can be served between two cookies, in scoops, bobbing in floats or blended into milkshakes, just as any of the cookies can be sold individually or by the half- or full dozen(s).
But don’t expect this “dessert place” to welcome crowds only in
the evenings. Doors open at 7 a.m., for logistical and altruistic purposes.
Living on love
Ken wasn’t supposed to be in that grand opening picture.
While he was involved in every bit of the store’s planning, he had his own 30-year career as a social worker. But as each day of the soft opening ticked by, he found himself more involved, until he quit his job in favor of his family’s venture, inspiredin part by his step-daughter.
“Hannah’s priorities are right,” he said. “She isn’t worried about bills, but she’s in tune with how people are treating her and how she treats people, and about love and friendship and community.”
The team would be there by 7
a.m. anyway to start making “heirloom recipe” cookies and small batch ice cream. They open then to sell a few cups of coffee and make themselves available to Montour School District’s transition program, which contributes a few team members with special needs, such as 17-year-old Donny Johnson.
“It’s a good job back there,” he said, staring into the distance and shuffling his feet. He calls Hannah “really smart” in her baking knowhow. “That’s how her brain works.” He’s better at organizing and enjoys it, he says.
Sam Barkowitz, 33, is a team member with autism and a family friend of the Feda-Foxes. Although he started college with an interest in computers, he knew food was his calling, and ice cream has his heart.
“She is patient and really good at explaining things to me,” he said of Connie. And after making his first batch of ice cream recently, he said, “I’m excited but mostly proud that I can make food for people.”
Because Ken’s presence wasn’t part of the business plan, Connie jokes that he’ll “live on love and cookies” because they can’t pay him yet. But with the business’s unique team members and priorities, it seems Ken is no less of a social worker than he ever was.
Go your own way
Connie can’t tell you about her team members’ disabilities — not just because that information is private, but because it doesn’t matter to her.
What does is giving individuals with special needs, including her own daughter, a place to hone their abilities and carve out a set of skills. That isn’t much different than Addison taking pride in his new skill, one-of-a-kind ice cream flavors, or Ken’s “Musical Mondays,” when he and other hobbymusician friends jam in the store’s entryway.
Cookie Cookie Ice Cream took much of the family’s life savings to create, but this new life is worth the gamble to them.
“We don’t want to get rich,” Connie said. “But if we can pay our bills, that’s all we need.”
“Some people get by on ramen noodles. We’re living on cookies. Can’t complain about that.”