As children, we are warned not to eat the raw cookie dough before it goes in the oven, for fear of food poisoning from an uncooked egg. The possibility of edible cookie dough seemed unfathomable until just recently. 

In November, Bonnie Sneider, a freshman at MICDS, with help from her family, opened “Dough Co.” at the food court at West County Center. The store creates and sells a safe-to-eat version of the treat. 

Ohr Chadash recently caught up with Bonnie to ask her about her business and her passion for edible cookie dough.

How did you have the idea to start Dough Co.?

My family has always been involved in business and as I’ve gotten older, I’ve been thinking about things to invent. I went to Dough in New York City and I thought about how St. Louis really needed a unique idea that no one had thought of. So I was like, why not bring this really cool idea that has taken off in New York to St. Louis? 

What steps did you take to make Dough Co. a reality? 

I started thinking about this in the summer and I was trying to push this on my mom but she was hesitant because she already owns another business. My mom sent me a list of questions over the summer that, if I could answer, she’d consider [helping to open Dough Co.]. So I wrote out a mini-business plan and talked about what we would need to start it up . She got more comfortable with the idea and it took off.  

What kinds of cookie dough do you sell at Dough Co.?

We offer nine flavors [of cookie dough]. All of the flavors have different mixins and a lot of them have similar bases. I named a lot of flavors after my family members. We call my grandpa Buzzy, and our cinnamon flavor is named Buzzy. We have a seasonal flavor, mint chocolate chip, and we hope to continue doing seasonal flavors and switching them out. We also sell baked goods with cookie dough incorporated. We have brownies with cookie dough on top and then we have baked cookies with cookie dough in the middle.

Has Dough Co. been successful so far?

We opened Nov. 15. We have seen a lot of success since then, and it has been great. We’re really pleased with the outcome and have been getting a lot of positive feedback. We’ve been changing things as we go based on comments on Facebook and that kind of thing.

What does the future of Dough Co. look like? 

We’re not sure if [West County Center] will be our only location. Originally we wanted a storefront location but we decided to go with the mall because it was right in the holiday season and we thought we could learn a lot from this and get a lot of traffic from the mall. Possibly we will open up a storefront location; we’re not sure about that yet. We’d love to expand if we see fit to do so. Also franchising would be great if we got the opportunity.