Family-owned Saratoga Springs cookie shop infuses sweet treats with basketball, sneakers and music culture
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- A collage of professional basketball players is visible inside the Dunked Cookies shop in Saratoga Springs on Aug. 21, 2024.
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- Dunked Cookies owner Lieta Auelua works behind the counter assessing orders Aug. 21, 2024.
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- The “roster” of flavors at Dunked Cookies in Saratoga Springs is shown Aug. 21, 2024.
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- A shoe box filled with cookie packaging is displayed at Dunked Cookies in Saratoga Springs on Aug. 21, 2024.
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- The outside facade of Dunked Cookies in Saratoga Springs is seen Aug. 21, 2024.
Lieta Auelua says her husband, Jerome, has been baking cookies from scratch since he was a senior in high school.
‘”It was kind of like him and his siblings and his mom’s — their recipe — and he would just make it for family members and give it out,” Auelua said.
Along with his knack for whipping up baked goods, he also loves basketball, popular sneakers and music. But who knew meshing all of those things together to create a unique experience for cookie enthusiasts would prove to be a slam dunk of a business idea?
Alas, it would take a health scare before the family put a plan in motion.
In 2020, Auelua said her husband suffered a heart attack and was diagnosed with a condition called cardiomyopathy.
She believes the heart attack may have been a result of stress due to his job working as a program director at a mental health facility at the time.
Auelua says he’s had a total of seven heart attacks since then, but fortunately he recovered each time.
“After that first heart attack, it (was), you know, scary for me, because the field he was in was so stressful. And so knowing that, like his profession kind of could kill him, you know, and then they’ll just replace him, but I would be without a husband and my children without a father,” Auelua explained.
That’s when the family decided to turn his passion for baking cookies and basketball into a business.
She trademarked the name “Dunked Cookies” to get the branding out to the public.
“I knew the idea was great, and I knew that if anyone had money, they could crush me if they wanted to. So I needed to, you know, make this my intellectual property, so that I couldn’t get crushed,” Auelua said.
In 2021, they entered the Sugar High dessert festival to gain exposure for their unique style of cookies.
After the first Sugar High event, Dunked Cookies gained traction, leading to two big events with Vivint and at sneaker conventions.
But they had to develop additional flavors to go along with Dunked’s signature “O.G.” chocolate chip cookie that kickstarted the whole idea.
“From his O.G. we developed four more flavors,” Auelua said. “We used the base to develop four more flavors, and then after that, like a year later, I was like, ‘You know what? Let’s, let’s do a full 15.’ Because I feel like if you have five flavors, it’s easy to kind of burn through it.”
Auelua says although all of the cookies share the same baking base as the original chocolate chip flavor, it was important to make sure each offering has its own identity.
“I’m not a food scientist. It was just a lot of trial and error to get everything to have their own unique taste,” Auelua said.
The number 15 also is significant because that’s the typical number of players on any given NBA basketball team roster.
Auelua said her husband grew up in Southern California as an avid Los Angeles Lakers fan, and she wanted to create an experience that customers would find unique and also paid homage to their love for sports and music.
Each cookie flavor comes in its own unique packaging tucked in what looks like a sneaker box. The roster of cookies is an ode to legendary basketball players, with names like “The Mamba,” “The Diesel,” “Cookies ‘N’ Kareem,” “His Airness” and, in true Utah fashion, “Stockton 2 Malone.”
“He (Jerome) came up with the (idea) — let’s put cookies in a sneaker box,” Auelua told the Daily Herald. “Because he’s like, ‘Man, after I would get some money, I would go to the store to buy sneakers.’ And then from there, you know, he’d wear the sneakers, and then the sneaker box would become like a keepsake of memories and stuff. And so it was so nostalgic for him and for me to hear that I just love to be creative, so I wanted to put everything that he loved into a company.”
But starting a business from the ground up would prove to be no easy feat. The couple bought a house for their family in Eagle Mountain and rented a commercial kitchen space in Springville, while most of their events were held in Salt Lake County.
“I wasn’t about to quit, but I was just like, this is such a great idea. But if I don’t have a storefront where I can come and just bake freely and people can come and buy cookies, then it’s almost like a really expensive hobby,” Auelua said.
In April of last year, her brother, who works as real estate agent, helped them secure a location to open a brick-and-mortar store in Saratoga Springs. They intended to open last summer but hit roadblocks along the way, according to Auelua.
Finally, Dunked Cookies officially opened its doors earlier this summer at the end of June.
Auelua said while the goal was always to open a storefront, she didn’t want it to look like a carbon copy of every other Utah cookie shop.
“I’ve always envisioned this in my mind, that it’s more of an art space … like an art gallery. It’s more of an experience as opposed to, let’s just go eat and, you know, get out of here,” Auelua noted.
A step inside of Dunked and customers will see a collage of basketball memorabilia, a photo booth, a stack of what looks like shoe boxes piled high to the ceiling to fill the cookie orders and, of course, the full roster of cookie flavors.
“We want to be able to let people know you can come, you can eat, you can take pictures. It’s a whole vibe in here,” Auelua said.
Though Auelua operates the business, her husband is involved in making decisions and ensuring the business aligns with his vision.
Unlike other cookie shops, Dunked’s roster of flavors do not rotate, but Auelua says next year they will implement a “draft” where new flavors will be introduced, and customers will be able to vote on which ones make the updated list.
Dunked Cookies is located at 1453 Summer Village Road next to Tenney’s Pizza off Crossroads Boulevard just east of Redwood Road in Saratoga Springs.
