There’s a new coffee stand open in downtown Chehalis, and it isn’t just any old coffee stand.
It’s owned by the Pacific Northwest Cookie Co. Customers can grab delicious, locally made cookies to go along with a hot cup of coffee.
Espresso! by Pacific Northwest Cookie Co. is located next to Chehalis City Hall at 272 N. Market Blvd. Currently, the business’s hours and days of operation are 6 to 11 a.m. Monday through Friday, but that might change in the future as demand is gauged.
Originally founded by Callie Carpenter — who is also now the mayor of Bucoda — and her siblings in 2018, Pacific Northwest Cookie Co. has been steadily growing ever since. The cookies have gone from being sold in just a handful of coffee stands in Lewis County to nearly 80 stands and businesses in three states on top of online and corporate catering sales.
Callie and her brother, Alex Carpenter, met with The Chronicle on Tuesday, Oct. 1, at the coffee stand to talk about their latest endeavor.
“Monday was our first day open,” Alex said.
Espresso! by Pacific Northwest Cookie Co. was opened in order to give Lewis County residents a place where they can always get Pacific Northwest Cookie Co. cookies as they sometimes sell out elsewhere. They also have many local customers who buy their cookies online but have asked for a retail location.
“People all the time are just like, ‘Can I just pick it up? I’m local and don’t want to pay for shipping.’ So our mom would just give them her personal address, and I was like, ‘Dude, no!’” Callie added.
Customers hungry for cookies will be able to place orders online and pick them up at the coffee stand or drop by the stand to grab them along with a coffee.
Alex, who has nearly a decade of experience as a Starbucks barista, is currently running the coffee stand in the mornings before joining his siblings at the Pacific Northwest Cookie Co. bakery to help them finish the day’s work there.
“We’re hecka busy,” Callie added.
They purchase coffee beans wholesale and currently have Pacific Northwest-sourced vegan flavor syrups along with a Brazilian reserve coffee bean.
“We roast our own beans, too,” Alex said.
Pacific Northwest Cookie Co. produces vegan, gluten-free and soy-free cookies in a variety of flavors. The cookies are made with ethically sourced, all natural ingredients, no preservatives and have even been certified by Vegan Action, a nonprofit focused on certifying vegan products that are cruelty free.
At the new coffee stand, the ingredients they use in their various coffee drinks are also all natural and vegan to match their cookies, Callie added.
“Everything we’re doing with the coffee stand, we’re trying to marry it to where you can come in and if someone’s like, ‘Oh I’m vegan,’ we can be like, ‘We got you, our standard is oat milk,’” Callie said.
The drive to make vegan products that look and taste traditional came after one of Callie’s brothers suddenly developed an intolerance to gluten and dairy, severely limiting his meal options.
Their mother, Susy Carpenter, is known for her pies, cookies and other baked goods, which used to be a part of the menu at Catrina’s Catering Company in Adna before the company closed following owner Catrina Gardipee’s death.
Using Susy’s cookie recipes as starting points, Callie and her siblings began experimenting with different gluten-free and vegan ingredients. After several months of trial and error, they found the perfect recipe, which is now a closely guarded family secret.
Since taking their recipe to market in 2018, the company has gone from producing a few hundred cookies a week to roughly 2,000 a week in 2021. It is now pumping out approximately 10,000 cookies a week.
They have started to take on corporate catering clients, with one customer requesting muffins.
“Just with the Amazon corporate office alone, we’re doing like 6,000 muffins a month,” Callie said.
Even with that level of success, the Carpenters haven’t forgotten their roots at the Avenue Espresso coffee stands, which helped Pacific Northwest Cookie Co. get its first distributor in 2018.
“Even right now if you go to Avenue, there’s a limited edition flavor that we are just selling through Avenue that we won’t even sell here,” Callie said. “... A lot of our distributors are pissed and are just like, ‘Why?’ And it’s because we appreciate the relationship. They really helped us get into the community.”
The current limited edition flavor, “avalanche,” is a cranberry, white chocolate and oatmeal cookie. It is available at the seven different Avenue Espresso locations in Chehalis, Centralia, Tumwater and Rochester.
Other limited cookie flavors currently available include pumpkin-doodle and birthday cake cookies, while staples such as snickerdoodle, chocolate chip, peanut butter and oatmeal raisin cookies are also on the menu.
“Some of the things we’re now doing, I always thought it was possible but without the people here that continue to be here for us and support us, we couldn’t be where we are right now. We made it through COVID, and it’s kind of nuts,” Callie said. “I’m not even sure how we did it, but a lot of it was because we had community support when up north didn’t support us because nobody was in the offices and they weren’t buying.”
For a list of locations of where to find cookies, nutritional information or to place an online purchase, visit the Pacific Northwest Cookie Co.’s website at https://pnwcookies.com/.
