New cookie franchise planning first Iowa location in Cedar Rapids

CEDAR RAPIDS — If you can’t get enough of the burgeoning cookie chains setting up shop across Iowa, keep an eye out for a new franchise coming to Cedar Rapids in January.

Dirty Dough Cookies will be opening its first Iowa location at 2811 Wiley Blvd. SW, Suite 100, in early January. The newly-developed Westdale location is where Westdale Theater used to be, next to El Paraiso Mexican Bar and Grill.

Like other competitors, Dirty Dough bakes cookies on location. But unlike most offerings at shops such as Crumbl and Insomnia Cookies, Dirty Dough specializes in cookies with a combination of layers, mix-ins and fillings inside the dough.

Cedar Rapids franchise owner Tina Pipkin, who previously owned another franchise, most recently worked as a branch supervisor for the Cedar Rapids Public Library for seven years.

The Dirty Dough brand has a mental wellness initiative with its nonprofit, Life is Sweet Foundation, which provides grants to youth mental wellness centers in each community with a franchise.

“The exciting part of Dirty Dough Cookies is, of course, the amazing stuffed cookies. But we are also focused on mental health and impacting our communities through inclusion, awareness and acceptance,” Pipkin said. “The Dirty Dough cookies literally and figuratively encompass the motto ‘It is what’s inside that counts.’ ”

The brand has been expanding rapidly around the country. By the end of this year, Dirty Dough will have upward of 60 stores, with plans for more than 100 more openings in the future.

Most of its current locations are scattered across the Sun Belt.

Comments: Features reporter Elijah Decious can be reached at (319) 398-8340 or elijah.decious@thegazette.com.