Tim Harty, The Business Times

March 11 technically was the first day of Mary’s Mountain Cookies’ soft opening at its Grand Junction store, 2695 Patterson Road, Unit 1, in Village Fair Plaza.

But it wasn’t really, because husband-and-wife owners Justin and Tara Adis left the store’s front door open while training employees during the previous two days. And the smell of fresh-baked cookies had a Pied Piper effect. People just walked in, and then, well, they might as well sell them cookies.

The Mary’s Mountain Cookies store is the second for Justin and Tara, as they opened a store in Fruita, 138 S. Park Square, Unit 103, on Oct. 27 last year.

Having a few months of experience there has been highly beneficial as they prepared to open the Grand Junction location.

“Our learning curve got flattened out a lot, because of having done the first location.,” Justin said. “Working with the city of Fruita versus the city of Grand Junction, even though they’re both Mesa County, they’re two different entities, so those were different experiences there.

“But other than that, getting the store set up, it’s pretty much all the same, right? It’s getting the refrigerators, the freezers, the merchandisers, the cabinets, the cookie case. It’s all pretty easily duplicatable from one store to another.”

Justin also detailed operational lessons from the Fruita store, saying they learned a lot about:

• Inventory management and how pacing of sales dictates what they actually need versus what they think they need.
• Staffing, such as how many employees they really need at any given time or on certain days, and they’ve gained a good feel for that.
• A good understanding of what overall expenses are, which they hope will lead to a quicker return on investment than they had in Fruita.

Other than that, Justin added, “The mixing, the baking, the toppings, all that stuff is all the same.”

One noteworthy difference is the size of the buildings, as the Grand Junction store has about 400 more square feet.

That, Justin said, will allow the new location to serve as the production facility, which is useful, because, “We’re gonna be doing all the farmers markets in the area – Fruita, Grand Junction, Palisade – plus other events. Plus, we’ve been doing a lot of big corporate orders. Like, we did a 1,500-cookie order for Christmas for a business, out of Fruita, which was tough, because it’s a smaller facility.”