Via’s Cookies Gives Back to the Community

By David Durrett – a current intern at GreenStar Food Co+op, David Durrett is a lifelong resident of Ithaca as well as a graduate of Ithaca College. He is a freelance reporter whose work has also appeared in Tompkins Weekly and The Ithaca Voice, among other publications. 

Olivia Carpenter, a member of this year’s graduating class of Ithaca College, combined her love of baking and her passion for social justice in her business, Via’s Cookies.

Olivia launched Via’s Cookies in January of 2021. While studying at Ithaca College, she entered and won two business competitions, taking home more than $6,000 in prizes and using the money to start her business. Olivia has been baking since the age of 14, when she was raising money to participate in sports and other club activities, and gradually refined her recipe over time.

Olivia donates five percent of her profits to help people of color and LGBTQ+ students who are facing extreme challenges in their lives and one day hopes to establish a foundation to distribute grants to minority students. Learn more about her “Help a Friend” campaign on her website. Olivia explained that she grew up in a low-income family and on her website adds that, “she went through adversity at the hands of the community [she] was in.” These experiences have motivated her charitable efforts.

“I was inspired to make something that will allow me to give back to other people,” Olivia said.

Olivia aims to provide cookies for everyone’s tastes and dietary needs. She makes several different flavors of cookies, as well as vegan and gluten-free cookies.

Olivia has sold her cookies at GreenStar’s Cascadilla Street store since late May of 2021. The Co-op has many vegan and gluten-free varieties of cookies, but offers the regular (non-vegan and non-gluten-free) varieties of Via’s Cookies. Find them at GreenStar’s coffee bar. Olivia said GreenStar is excellent to work with, and it was easier to convince the Co-op to sell her cookies than many larger retailers.

“They are fantastic,” Olivia said. “I’m in communication with them every week, because they continue to place orders by email each week. Whenever I’m bringing the cookies to them, they always tell me how much they love the cookies, and how much people love them, and they’re always super nice to me.”

Olivia also shops at GreenStar, purchasing Earth Balance’s butter substitute, which she uses for gluten-free cookies, among other things, and said GreenStar charges affordable prices for consumers while still allowing the people who sell their products to turn a profit.

“I’m supporting them and they’re supporting me,” Olivia said.

Olivia sells her gluten-free and vegan cookies at Ithaca Bakery. She also sells at the Trumansburg Farmers Market when it’s open for the season, as well as farmers markets and craft fairs. She hopes to expand Via’s Cookies and sell her products in many other locations, including other GreenStar locations, Gimme! Coffee, and larger stores, but the latter requires producing more cookies. For example, Olivia would need to be able to produce thousands of cookies in order to sell at Wegmans.

“I’m not trying to stay stagnant.,” Olivia said. “I want to be selling them everywhere, I want to keep scaling it up. I just know that the next hurdle I need to overcome is I need to hire someone and figure out how to really make enough money to pay someone a good wage as well.”

Olivia anticipates that she will be able to hire someone in April or May, when sales pick up and she launches her new website, which allows for online orders. Olivia has also lined up a commercial kitchen for herself to increase her production capacity enough to expand. She currently bakes out of her home kitchen, in which she can only fit 24 cookies in her oven at once and has limited counter space. She takes sanitation seriously and must deep-clean her kitchen every time she cooks or bakes in order to prevent contamination.

“It’s a lot for a living space,” Olivia said, “and the commercial kitchen will give me the ability to store much larger quantities of ingredients and to make a lot more cookies at the same time.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has hindered Olivia’s plans to expand, especially since many events that she planned on selling her cookies to were downsized or canceled. She had anticipated making $1,000 from one Ithaca College affair that had been canceled. Olivia, who will graduate from college this year, said she appreciates the education that Ithaca College has given her. While she will have more free time once she is no longer a full-time student, relatively little else will change for her.

“Here I am in college with my job, with the thing I plan on doing outside of college,” Olivia said, “and so once I graduate, it’ll be like, ‘here’s your degree, keep doing what you’ve been doing.'”

Olivia, who started Via’s Cookies to help people, said the most fulfilling part of her business is helping people. Many thank her for her cookies. She added that people appreciate how she makes cookies for those who are unable to eat gluten, as well as for donating money to help minorities.

“I have a lot of instances where people are thanking me for making a product that actually tastes good that they can eat, and that feels really good,” Olivia said.

For more information, visit the Via’s Cookies website at https://viascookies.com/pages/home or the Instagram page at https://www.instagram.com/viascookies/.