A place for pancakes, people – The Pancake Place earns state recognition
From the football field to the kitchen
December 1, 2025
KIMBERLY – Amid Appleton’s rapid downtown evolution, Doughlicious General Manager Chloe Schumann said the team decided to move out of its previous storefront (322 W. College Ave.) and into a new location in Kimberly – set to open spring 2026.
Since her family opened the business in Appleton roughly seven years ago, Schumann said Appleton’s downtown environment has grown to become more and more residential.
“There’s just been so many changes [with] apartment buildings literally going up everywhere,” she said.
The additional and consistent street traffic, Schumann said, made it increasingly difficult for Doughlicious to operate its food truck out of its former College Ave. storefront.
“Our food truck is pretty much our biggest source of business – we make a lot of money and do very well with the food truck,” she said. “We’ve had a lot of issues with being able to even load our food truck because we can’t, [at times, access the neighboring alleyway or our parking spots]. So, we had nowhere to go.”
Additionally, Schumann said many Doughlicious customers found the downtown location inconvenient.
“We’ve been communicating with a lot of our customers lately,” she said. “More and more people are telling us how much they hate coming downtown and that they would visit us a lot more if we weren’t downtown – just because they don’t like the crowds, they don’t want to pack up their kids when it’s cold and walk.”
So, Schumann said those compounding factors eventually led her and her family to a new, 4,000-square-foot storefront within the Antique Up strip mall in Kimberly – located at 850 E. Maes Ave.
“Ultimately, we had to make the decision that it’s time for us to change it up a little bit,” she said.
New area, different challenges
When searching for a new Doughlicious location, Schumann said the storefront next to Antique Up became an obvious choice for several reasons.
“We’re very good friends with the lady who runs Antique Up,” she said. “We actually did food truck rallies there all summer, which gave us a pretty good turnout of people.”
During those rallies, Schumann said customers appreciated the easy parking and calmer atmosphere, while still being conveniently close to the highway
“It’s overall an easy area to get to, and there’s really nothing else over here,” she said. “I actually recently moved to Little Chute, so I know the area pretty well, and there are not really [many sweets businesses] around here.”
Aside from a few chain restaurants and a seasonal drive-in, Schumann said residents in the Kimberly area typically have to travel to Appleton for sweets and treats.
“There’s just really nothing around here,” she said.
Those factors, Schumann said, weighed heavily on her and her family’s decision to move Doughlicious to Kimberly.
Though the food truck is and will remain a core part of the business, Schumann said with its new location will come additional changes as Doughlicious works to expand its storefront offerings.
“I’m not fully announcing [those changes] yet, but we have so many that are going to come [with] the new store, and I’m really excited for that,” she said. “We’re still experimenting with fun menu changes and kind of a rebrand. We’re [also] going to elevate our space to be something like nothing else in the area at all, and offer some things that, [right now], you can’t find locally.”
Schumann said Doughlicious’s incoming storefront used to serve as a storage unit rental business.
“We are going to be completely remodeling the entire space – it needs lots and lots of work,” she said.
Working with the Village of Kimberly on their renovation plans, Schumann said they are discovering new challenges that come with operating a business in a smaller area.
“The Village of Kimberly has to approve everything that happens within the village…,” she said. “So, that’s definitely been something we’re trying to navigate, and it’s not been easy.”
However, despite the regulatory hurdles, Schumann said the business and village are excited to “bring something extra to the area” by working together.
“We want to make sure that we’re bringing amazing local flavors, tastes and things to the community that you just can’t find everywhere,” she said. “We want to make sure we’re [being] intensive with the new planning. We’re going to sample, travel and try places further away to bring specialty [offerings] to the small town.”
Eating > baking
Since its founding in 2018, Schumann said she’s worked both in and on the Doughlicious business with her parents.
“We started this [together], and I’ve pretty much run it since I was 14,” she said. “So, I’ve run the show for quite some time, and I’m only 21 now, but I literally couldn’t imagine doing anything else.”
After finishing high school online, Schumann said she knew operating the business was her professional goal – following in her parents’ entrepreneurial footsteps.
“My family has owned businesses my entire life – literally, my entire life,” she said. “When they owned a bar and restaurant while I was growing up, called Rock House in Brillion…, my mom made deep-fried cookie dough or Twinkies and Snickers – stuff like that.”
Schumann said Doughlicious originated from the shared enthusiasm she and her father had for raw cookie dough and gradually evolved into a business.
“My dad and I would take [cookie dough] from the restaurant, bring it home and eat spoonfuls of it right out of the container,” she said. “My mom would always yell at us, because [she’d ask], ‘Where the heck is my cookie dough?’”
After seeing examples of edible cookie dough shops in other cities across the U.S., Schumann said it didn’t take long for them to move forward with opening Doughlicious
“We pretty much opened at the same time as [a store] that blew up in New York,” she said. “We just saw that somebody was [making and selling edible cookie dough], and we thought, ‘that’s literally genius.’”
Wanting to match – or surpass – other edible cookie dough brands, Schumann said they brought in products from around the globe and conducted a blind taste test against their own creations.
“We literally ordered from everywhere,” she said. “We took them out of the containers they came in, numbered them and had our family and friends come over to judge what they liked and what they didn’t.”
Schumann said the experiment provided her and her parents with all the insights they needed to officially launch Doughlicious in 2018.
“Every single person loved [our] homemade recipes, so that was very special,” she said. “We created all of the flavors that we have, and some of those are actually family recipes we’ve always used. We’ve just converted them in a way to have it edible and safe to eat [raw].”
Now, as they get ready to open their new Kimberly storefront next year, Schumann said she feels a deep sense of pride in the business and in all that she and her parents have accomplished with Doughlicious
“I’m so proud of what we’ve accomplished – what I’ve accomplished [and] what I’ve been able to do to grow as much as we have, even at such a young age,” she said. “We started with a 400-square-foot building. Now we’re [utilizing] 4,000 square feet, and this next thing we’re doing is [going to be] even better than what we have now.”
For updates on its new Kimberly location and the exciting changes Schumann said they’re currently experimenting with, visit the Doughlicious Facebook page.
