When WSU graphic design instructor Jenny Venn learned her boyfriend, Daniel Pewewardy, owned a commercial cookie oven in August, the couple joked about starting a company. Little did they know that the joke would come to life less than two months later as Let’s Fkn Dough, a pop-up cookie company.
The company has been well-received by the public, planning to launch merch next month and has bookings as far out as February 2025.
Although LFD is a cookie company at its core — offering fresh, hot cookies at every pop-up — Venn and Pewewardy hope to use it to motivate people, spread humor and give back to the community. Venn explained that “cookies are just a means to connection.”
“We both really believe in the power of words and really enjoy motivating other people,” Venn said. “It’s one of both of our gifts … That’s really where the saying, ‘Let’s Fucking Dough’ came from. Both of us have been through a lot in our lives, and one thing that keeps us going is helping lift others up.”
The company gets its cookie dough from a bakery in New York, but its menu is not set. Venn explained that the goal is to “keep (the flavors) fun and interesting and also conceptual,” matching cookie types to events. Flavors have included salted caramel cookies at some of its fall pop-ups and pairing specialty cookies with whiskeys at a VIP event, and the company is looking to serve gingerbread for the holidays.
In addition to custom cookies, almost every Lets Fkn Dough (LFD) pop-up will have a beneficiary. Venn and Pewewardy want to use the company to promote causes important to them such as mental health and well-being and supporting Indigenous communities, women-owned businesses and LGBTQ+ youth.
“I feel like if you operate in the public sphere, with a company or if you’re an artist or anything, it’s important to have a genuine connection with your audience and the messaging,” Pewewardy said. “I think it was important for us … (to) have our personalities reflected in the brand.”
In addition to using cookies, the couple also uses the company’s social media presence to spread awareness of their causes and motivate their followers.
“Each of the cookies comes in a package that has the logo and also a motivational saying,” Venn said. “Another motivational thing (is) … every Monday, we do a Motivation Monday post that has some type of motivator.”
Creating an entire brand from scratch in just a couple of months has been an intensive process for the couple, and both have used their backgrounds in research and design to make it come together quickly in a way that Venn said is “super contradictory to any of my training as a graphic designer.”
“With this, it’s like, we have an oven, we have cookies, let’s fucking dough,” Venn said. “And that’s what we did. We both just said, ‘We have no idea really. Let’s just go and see what happens.’”
Venn and Pewewardy are grateful for the public’s reaction to LFD since its launch at the end of September. According to Venn, LFD will continue to expand and give back to the community over time.
“Both of us are creative and we’re ideas people, and you never know how those babies are going to be received in the world,” Venn said. “The fact that LFD has been so well perceived by other people and they’ve loved it. We want to give more. We want to keep going, keep sharing that message too, and also, it’s really neat to know that this is just the beginning of it.”
Ultimately, the two hope their sweet treats and motivating messaging will make a positive impact on the world.
“For me and Jenny, the most important factor is positive mental health and self-care,” Pewewardy said. “The world is hard sometimes, and it’s salty, and so it’s always good to have some soft, sweet cookies in the world to make things better.”
