Spend a few minutes outside of Cookie Fix, the tiny bakeshop on 18th Street South in downtown Homewood, and it’s easy to see why the store is a beacon of happiness.

On a Tuesday afternoon, downtown Homewood was bustling with holiday cheer as shoppers strolled through the streets with bags, stopping at the stores and restaurants along the boulevard.

Outside of Cookie Fix, a chalkboard listed the day’s flavors– from the limited edition Jingle Bell Funfetti to the Billionaire– the bakery’s rich twist on the classic chocolate chip cookie with peanut butter chips, caramel, and marshmallows.

The bakery’s alluring magic was its aroma. The sweet, buttery scent of freshly baked cookies wafted out, greeting patrons as they opened the front door. Around 3:00, a mother and daughter went into the shop to take a break from holiday shopping.

“It smells so good in there!” the young girl piped up excitedly.

“It does smell yummy, doesn’t it!” her mother replied.

Minutes later, an elderly couple stopped outside the bakery’s storefront.

“Oh, this is the cookie place!” the man said as his face lit up. “Let’s go in! I’m a visual person.”

Amy Jason started small when she opened the first location of Cookie Fix in 2016. The Homewood shop is the bakery’s flagship location. Six years later, the cookie brand has three additional storefronts–two in Alabama (one in Cahaba Heights and the other in Huntsville) and one in Franklin, Tenn. And Cookie Fix is on track to open three new Alabama locations in 2024– one on U.S. 280, one in Hoover, and another in Madison County.

We caught up with Knox Ashford, the manager of the Cookie Fix shop in Homewood, to talk about the Billionaire cookie, planning the Cookie Fix menu, and the bakery’s best-selling cookies.

Tell me more about the Billionaire cookie.

Knox Ashford: The Billionaire is a really fun option. Mostly because it’s the only peanut butter option that doesn’t have peanut butter in the base. It’s our standard chocolate chip base, but then it has peanut butter chips, regular chocolate chips, marshmallows, and caramel. It’s kind of a fun mix, not like that full peanut butter taste, but you get the peanut butter, you get the chocolate. It’s kind of a little balance of both.

And why is it called the Billionaire?

It kind of just felt right. It’s got bunch of fun stuff in it. A lot of variety of different things. It’s kind of a rich cookie, so it just felt like a fitting name.

About how many flavors of cookies do you all sell per day?

So per day, anywhere between 12 and 14. If you want to put a number on it, I’d say 13 most days. They swap daily, so I’d say about 26 to 24 flavors per week. And then those flavors change a little bit every month and then significantly every two months.

Let’s talk a little bit about daily routines at Cookie Fix. Not just your routine as a manager, but also the routines of the staff. Because you all turn out a lot of cookies a day in such a small space!

Yeah, it’s a very small space! And so many cookies go through. You know, thousands of cookies a day. We bake fresh all day long. We make the dough in our commissary and bake everything fresh all throughout the day. The bakers come in early in the morning, typically 8 a.m. or earlier and they start baking everything that’s going fill up the case when we open and get orders ready. Then, as the day goes on and we sell stuff, we continue baking throughout the day. So, you can always come in almost any hour throughout the day and get a fresh baked cookie, or something that’s been baked over the last hour or two. Which is kind of a unique experience for a bakery. Just logistically, we’re set up really well for that at Cookie Fix.

In terms of the front staff, they come in 30 minutes to an hour before we open. They get everything set up and all of the cookies in the case. They get the signs put out, they write on the chalkboard what the flavors are going to be. They start filling the orders that are going to go on the shelf and stuff. And then throughout the day, they’re doing pretty much everything. They are taking orders, they are filling stuff, they are helping customers and answering questions, and helping them figure out what they need for their bake orders or what frozen dough they want to pick out. They’re just like a concierge for the customer.

So, earlier, you said you bake thousands of cookies a day?

Oh yeah, on some days it can be.

For just the Homewood location? Or all of the Birmingham-area locations?

Yeah, for one location! We go through a ton of stuff. We open up each day with about…I’m trying to do the math in my head… about 600ish cookies when we open, most days at our Homewood location. And we’re baking fresh all day long. So, on a regular day, during the year, we do lots of numbers. The holiday season is our busiest time of the year. We can go through just tons and tons of cookies. Lots of things on order. At both stores, just packed full of stuff. And then, there are lots of big corporate orders that we do at our commissary. And those can be huge too. So we’re just moving through tons of stuff throughout the day.

We spoke about the “Billionaire.” But what are some of your most popular flavors? I know you have a rotating menu.

So, always and forever, our most popular flavors, number one and number two, are Chocolate Chip and Healthy Peanut Butter. Chocolate Chip kind of speaks for itself, it’s the one everybody loves. The one everybody grows up getting. Most customers don’t leave the door without getting one chocolate chip in their box. And that’s here every single day. So people can come in every day, any time of year, and always get a chocolate chip cookie.

And the same goes for the healthy peanut butter. It’s something we carry every day, all year long. So, there’s a big following for that cookie. Each person can come in every day and get it. And what people love about it is that it’s healthy relative to everything else in the case. It’s lighter on butter and sugar than the other cookies. It is a flourless cookie, so it’s a gluten-friendly option. It’s not certified gluten-free just because o you have to have a certified gluten-free facility if you’re going to get that tag, so for people who have light gluten allergies or gluten intolerance, it’s a really great option for a lot of them. So, that one is always really popular. And despite the healthy moniker, it tastes really, really good.

For people who have never been to Cookie Fix, what cookies should they try?

Can I do a couple that I really, really love that don’t get enough shine?

Of course!

The one that you can come in and get in-store is our Magic City, which has walnuts and dark chocolate and toffee. It’s just really, really good. It’s got a great crunch with it with the walnuts. It’s got a little bit of saltiness to it. It’s got a nice, rich flavor. I love a dark chocolate. I think that it’s one of the best chocolate-based cookies that we make. That’s a really good option more people should try. And other one in the case is the Pecan Sandie. It’s kind of a shortbread cookie that’s covered in cinnamon, it has pecans throughout. It’s got kind of like a crumbly texture. It’s really, really good. One of my favorites. Another one that we have periodically throughout the year, which I think is secretly one of the best cookies that we make is the Plain Jane. Which, of course, the name doesn’t sound particularly exciting, but it’s like this oatmeal, cream cheese sugar cookie. It’s got Sugar in the Raw on the outside. It’s got a little bit of a crunch to it. A little bit of a chewiness. It’s kind of like the best sugar cookie you ever had.

How do you all plan the menu? Because you put out the menu for the month. Can you give me some insight on how do you plan for that?

It’s a long process. A lot of information and data goes into it! It’s something that we work on throughout the whole year taking the year into account the year before. What sold really well. What were people excited about? What do we think, not necessarily just what’s going to sell a lot, but what we do feel gives our menu some diversity. Some intrigue. Things that we personally just really love. All that kind of goes into it. And then making sure we’ve got seasonal options. Something that’s fun that kind of fits the vibe of that season that’s going on. All of that kind of goes into effect. We’ve been planning for December all year long. But we finalized a couple of months before.

How do you give the cookies their unique shape? Plump in the middle and flat on the edges, but crispy all over? Is that a secret?

Making sure our cookies are crispy on the outside and gooey on the inside is a little bit of a secret but mostly a process! A big part of it is, of course, the recipes themselves but also the temperature of the oven and making sure we always bake the dough from frozen! We always tell our customers to make our frozen dough straight out of the freezer and that’s a big part of getting that tall mound in the center and that crispy exterior.