Horsing around is a way of life for two sisters in De Pere
The Aissen Tree Farm celebrates 35 years in business
May 19, 2025
ASHWAUBENON – Erika Dunne said if you asked her three years ago when she started randomly decorating sugar cookies if she would be where she is today – the proud owner of the recently opened Green Bay Cookie Co. – “I would have laughed.”
“The growth in three years (and) the place this business has gone is something I never imagined or could have guessed,” she said. “I am not a trained baker. I am a mom of seven children who started a random cookie business that has grown more than I could have ever imagined.”
A business in the baking
Though she’s always had an interest in baking, Dunne said she didn’t start sharing her creations with others until she turned 40.
Having just given birth to twins – No. 6 and 7 of the Dunne children – the San Diego-turned-Pembine-resident said she got into baking as a hobby, something different from her everyday life as a stay-at-home mom.
That, she said, led to online cooking decorating classes.
However, as she learned new techniques and designs, Dunne said she had hundreds of cookies “just sitting there.”
“So, I packed them all up in gift boxes, took them to our kids’ school and gave them to all the staff,” she said.
From there, Dunne said she started receiving cookie orders, and before she knew it, The Tattered Whisk was born.
Living in Pembine – a town of fewer than 900 residents in Marinette County – Dunne said, meant that if she wanted to turn Tattered Whisk into something, she’d have to branch out into other communities.
This, she said, led to her driving to the Green Bay and Fox Valley regions at least three days a week to deliver cookies or teach cookie decorating classes.
Doing her best to balance her life as a wife and mom of seven with her newfound career as a cookie-baking entrepreneur, Dunne said it became clear to her and her husband it was time to relocate.
Furthermore, with seven kids, Dunne said traveling to annual doctor visits or dentist appointments meant they would miss an entire day of school – “it really just became undoable and silly.”
“We needed to be in Green Bay where the business was and for the convenience of our family,” she said.
A new recipe
When the decision was made to relocate her family and her business to the Green Bay area, Dunne said she knew a rebrand was needed.
“When I started The Tattered Whisk, I spent a long time coming up with a name, but now with opening the storefront in Green Bay, it really felt like a name change was something this business really needed,” she said. “Green Bay Cookie Co. was what really spoke to me, and I couldn’t shake that name for a store from my mind.”
When she began looking for a location for the storefront, Dunne said she didn’t really know where to start.
“I started calling places that had signs out front,” she said. “Most never got back to me, and the ones that did, I asked to see the facility and never really received any responses, as (the owners) weren’t local.”
About Green Bay Cookie Co.’s current location – 940 Hansen Road No. E in Ashwaubenon – Dunne said, “I drove by every day, multiple times, as we live just five minutes down the street.”
“So I called and my now-landlord, Tim Beesaw, answered the phone, and a few days later, I was in the space talking about what this would look like conceptually with him,” she said.
Though she grew The Tattered Whisk significantly over the last three years, and she was confident in the decision to open a storefront, Dunne said “it was so nerve-wracking.”
“I had zero idea what I was doing,” she said. “I had never opened a storefront, I didn’t have much of an idea of what I wanted it to look like. I just knew that was the next step, and it had to happen for me to continue to grow.”
Dunne said Beesaw provided her with a lot of insight into what the space could look like, how quickly the store could be opened and how the opportunity “was right at my fingertips.”
All kinds of thoughts, she said, were going through her mind at that time.
“It was a very scary leap – I’m taking on a huge new business expense,” she said. “I would think, ‘Is this the right location? Will this work? Is this the right step? Can I do this?’”
Despite her doubt, Dunne said she knew she had to try.
“I started working on the store space in late November 2024,” she said. “We opened Dec. 1 and have continued to add products and develop over the last few months.”
Though the first several months since opening have proven successful, Dunne said “I still second-guess it every day.”
“I am always nervous if I’m going to continue to grow and be able to keep this going – but every day is exceeding my expectations, every day my clients show up, new clients show up,” she said. “We have a community of people rooting for us and shopping with us, which is why this keeps going.”
Learning curve
Though she had successfully baked dozens of cookies every week, delivered them and thrived as a stay-at-home mom with The Tattered Whisk in Pembine, Dunne said opening and running a storefront bakery was definitely a different experience.
“There are a lot of things that go into a daily storefront that were not part of my business before,” she said. “So, there is a learning curve to that part, but I love it.”
Working outside of her home, Dunne said, has probably been the biggest transition for her.
“At home, I had built my basement into basically a commercial kitchen, so I had the luxury of going down and working, then hanging with the kids, then going back and doing some work, then doing kids stuff,” she said. “Now, I am at the shop every day, so my little girls are in preschool.”
On the flip side of that, Dunne said the work-home life balance she has been able to create “has been amazing.”
“I try not to work late – unless it’s December, or I have a very large, last-minute order – so my hours have been regulated,” she said. “Whereas at home, if the work was there and the kids were asleep, I would work till 1 a.m. Now, I close the shop and I’m not touching a cookie until the next day.”
The plan to hire someone in the near future, Dunne said, will help that balance even more.
“It’s a work in progress,” she said.
Dunne said her husband took a leave of absence from work to help her get the shop up and running – “so, right now, it’s him and me at the shop.”
“We are deciding if he stays in the shop and handles the wholesale side of the business or if he heads back to work soon,” she said. “At that point, I would consider hiring people. The store is starting to get busy enough to consider hiring maybe one other person part-time. I would love to see it continue to grow and continue adding employees.”
More to mix
Not only has she expanded the business – moving from an at-home operation to a storefront – but Dunne said she has also expanded her cookie options.
The Tattered Whisk, she said, primarily focused on custom-decorated sugar cookies.
Green Bay Cookie Co., on the other hand, Dunne said, offers an ever-growing list of cookie options.
“My passion has become new cookie flavors – it’s an obsession,” she laughed. “When you come into the shop, you will see we have so many flavor options. We don’t always have all of them, because we are a small batch bakery – all baked from scratch – but even if I don’t have your
favorite that day, I have your next-favorite.”
Since she isn’t a trained pastry chef, Dunne said she is proud of the growth she’s made in cookie options.
“Though I’m not a trained pastry chef, I have spent hours and hours working on recipes to perfect these flavor combinations, and I am so proud of the product that I put out on a daily basis,” she said.
Branching out into more than just sugar cookies, Dunne said, started even before Green Bay Cookie Co. opened its doors.
“Last summer, when doing markets, I noticed that people wanted something sweet but passed on the sugar cookies, and I wasn’t selling like I wanted,” she said. “So, I decided to start incorporating stuffed cookies at the markets.”
The new options, Dunne said, were very well received, and “I was selling out at the markets.”
Experimenting with new flavors, she said, further supported the decision to move to Green Bay and open a storefront bakery.
“After the market seasons ended, that’s when I was like, ‘Well, what now?’” she said. “I had basically turned my basement into a commercial kitchen, but supplies and stock were filling the entire basement and I was really out of room. This was part of what led to opening a store.”
Today, some of the cookies – all six ounces in weight – offered at Green Bay Cookie Co., Dunne said, include The Sweet & Salty Sea, Mr. Nutty Chip, The Ferrero Roacher, Caramel Coconut Vacay and Iced, Iced Oatmeal, Baby.
“We offer a wide variety of stuffed gourmet cookies, NY-style cookies, drop cookies, decorated sugar cookies and more,” she said.
Staying true to her roots with The Tattered Whisk, Dunne said custom-order cookies are still very much an option at Green Bay Cookie Co.
From business-logo-printed sugar cookies to hand-decorated cut-outs, she said custom cookie orders are available for in-store pick up or nationwide delivery.
More details are available online.
In addition to cookies, Dunne said Green Bay Cookie Co. offers other treats – including freeze-dried candy.
“When opening the store, I knew for sure we needed freeze-dried candy,” she said. “This was a very expensive purchase for the machine, but I knew I wanted to have this in the shop. It has proven to be a great asset and people love them.”
Wholesaling freeze-dried candy to local businesses, Dunne said, is a goal of hers in 2025.
Having a storefront, she said, provides her room to incorporate anything she wants to create – “I love that freedom.”
This, she said, includes viral Dubai cups.
“We make those weekly,” she said. “We have the best cups around. Everything for the cups is made from scratch – the chocolate ganache, the pistachio butter, the kataifi – all made in house.”
With The Tattered Whisk, Dunne said she would travel to different locations throughout the Green Bay and Fox Valley areas to host cookie-decorating classes.
“We offer decorating classes in the shop now instead of traveling to different locations,” she said. “I want to expand to offer more detailed decorating classes in the future, and possibly kids’ summer baking camps. The store is so new that we will continue to develop new
ideas and concepts to see what works and what the community wants to have.”
Keep calm and bake on
When asked what she sees for the future of Green Bay Cookie Co., Dunne said, “You know, I’m not sure.”
Above all, the at-home-baker-turned-bakery-owner said she foresees growth “in many different directions.”
“Moving into a larger wholesale market for freeze-dried candy, frozen cookies and frozen dough is a direction I want to really push this year and in the upcoming years,” she said.
All of that, however, Dunne said, takes time.
“We need the proper packaging, labeling, clients – so, this is a work in progress that we will continue to work toward,” she said. “I need to keep heading in the direction we are going, and I see amazing things to come for the store.”
Dunne said she has already increased Green Bay Cookie Co.’s products in Lambeau Field – a partnership that started with Delaware North, the Green Bay Packers’ food service partner, in late 2022.
Now being located in Titletown, just a handful of blocks from the stadium, she said she anticipates that the partnership will continue to grow.
“I am very excited for what is to come for Green Bay Cookie Co.,” she said. “The store is really
picking up momentum, and we are seeing a large increase in traffic in the shop – which is
awesome. I’m going through cookies like crazy, and that is exactly the kind of growth I want to continue.”
Dunne said she never planned on starting a cookie business, let alone opening a bakery storefront – “but it just kind of all fell in place.”
“So, I started working hard at growing this business, and that has led me to the store,” she said. “There is no replacement for hard work and determination, and if you’re willing to put in the effort and time, you have no idea what you can accomplish. Not many at-home cookie makers will ever accomplish something like this, so I am very proud of myself for being able to do that.”
For more on Green Bay Cookie Co., head to greenbaycookieco.com.
