Boulder Cookie bakes treats at The Kitchen Coop

BOULDER — Anna Fletcher uses ground almonds in place of four to make a gluten-free, grain-free chocolate-chip cookie that she says tastes just like the ones your grandma used to make.

Fletcher’s company, Boulder Cookie LLC, has been growing by leaps and bounds after she raised $7,500 in a Kickstarter online crowdfunding campaign in August.

The chocolate-chip and double-chocolate-chip cookies are sold at Alfalfa’s, area Lucky’s grocery stores, Natural Foods by Vitamin Cottage stores and at Whole Foods.

Fletcher said she quickly went through two kitchen commissary spaces in Boulder County before moving to The Kitchen Coop food-manufacturing plant in Broomfield about a month ago.

Being at the Kitchen Coop means being able to grow rapidly – baking 100 times more cookies at a time than the last place she cooked.

Fletcher developed her cookies as a personal chef for a family in Boulder with a child who has a grain-free diet. As she started making the cookies for other clients, demand grew rapidly. Fletcher then created the company and launched the Kickstarter campaign.

“Sounds yummy, right?” Fletcher said. “They’re actually very good, and they taste like your grandma’s cookies. Almond flour tastes like a regular cookie.”

Fletcher said she plans to focus on “nostalgic” flavors that her four kids like, as the company continues to grow.

Kitchen Coop employees are helping Fletcher with certifications she needs to sell cookies at Whole Foods, including insuring that the ingredients are certified as non-GMO, or genetically modified organism, ingredients. Opponents to food made with GMO ingredients say such ingredients present safety issues and environmental concerns.

If everything goes as planned in terms of growth, Fletcher will be happy to change her title to “cookie mogul” from “personal chef.”  

“Demand kept getting higher and higher, and I kept thinking, ‘This is more scalable than the personal chef work,’ ” Fletcher said. “I love branding, marketing and new recipes. That’s really where my passion is.”