The Cookie Lady of Louisville
LOUISVILLE, KY.—The rewards of travel are found in a warm light.
Last summer while driving back from Nashville, Tn., I stopped in Kentucky to see a minor league Louisville Bats baseball game. Around the third inning, an African woman in a bright yellow cotton kitenge (sarong) walked down my aisle. She was selling homemade cookies from a Kibo basket that she balanced on the top of her head. This was pretty great. She was effusive, smiling, and stopped for a photo with every fan.
I learned that Elizabeth Kizito was “The Cookie Lady.”
When this season’s Bats schedule was announced, my Louisville based friend John Hughes sent me a notice about the Aug. 2 “Cookie Lady Bobblehead Night” at Louisville Slugger Field. I had to be there. So, on Aug. 2 the Bats defeated the Toledo Mud Hens and former Cubs/White Sox, etc. pitcher Edwin Jackson, 3-2 before more than 8,000 fans who filled the stadium to see “The Cookie Lady.” I got a bobblehead of course, but this is not about that.
I could not believe Louisville’s warm response to Kizito. People arrived as early as 4:15 p.m for the 7 p.m. start. The Cookie Lady received a long and sweet standing ovation when she threw out the first pitch. Fans stood in line throughout the game to have Kizito sign their bobbleheads. Kizito’s guest list included grandchildren, in-laws, nephews and her sister Sarah, who flew in from London, England.
I got goosebumps. The crowd displayed a genuine outpouring of affection for their cultural icon.
We will always be a welcoming nation of immigrants. At any one moment in time, something as simple as a cookie can bring us together.
I told John that people are hungry for little bright stories during such dark times. And that was just hours before a weekend that saw mass murders in Dayton and El Paso.
Love is still out there.
The Bats honored Kizito because she has been vending at Slugger Field since it opened 20 years ago. She bakes 14 flavors and can carry up to 15 pounds of cookies on her head. The basket is made from grass and reeds. It stays balanced on her head without adhesives. On a typical night, Kizito will bring about 450 cookies to the game. But Aug. 2 was no typical night. She baked about 2,000 cookies for her bobblehead celebration.
Walking around and selling goods on the street is a tradition she carries from her native Uganda. Kizito is the oldest of 36 children from different mothers. Kizito was born under a banana tree and grew up in Nansana, a middle-class village about 20 miles from the Ugandan capital of Kampala. She came to the United States in 1972 at the age of 17. Kizito graduated from Eastern New Mexico University with a degree in Environmental Health.
The Cookie Lady had never tasted a homemade cookie until she came to America.
Kizito met her husband Todd Bartlett while she was waitressing at The People’s Place, a fine dining Louisville restaurant. Bartlett was a cook. They have been married 30 years. She is president and CEO of Kizito Cookies. He is Vice- President. “It’s a pretty average story,” Bartlett said. “I wasn’t on safari or anything like that. We hear a lot of stories about how we met, but the truth is we met at a restaurant.”
Elizabeth Kizito and Todd Bartlett (Courtesy of Todd Bartlett)
Bartlett was as moved at the response from “Cookie Lady Night” as John and I were.
Bartlett explained, “The city wants to be open-hearted. There’s a lot of refugees in this community. People want to send the message that they’re welcoming. When you see someone make a life in a new and strange place, it is heartwarming.
“Elizabeth is so happy to be here. On busy nights I’ll help her. She’s out in the crowd and I’ll stand there with 100 cookies. I can make the change, I have all kinds of flavors. And they’ll wait a half an hour for her to return. She’ll come back, see the line and say, ‘Why didn’t you take care of them?’ Well, they didn’t want to buy them from me.”
Kizito’s favorite cookie brand can change like the summer wind. “Right now I eat peanut butter,” she said in a declared African accent. “I like chocolate chip. Ginger snap is very good. I eat whatever is broken.”The Cookie Lady has cultivated a strong cult following for her “Lucky in Kentucky” (white chocolate chip, dark chocolate chip, and pecans.)
John and I needed a few of those.
Bartlett explained, “She knows the customers in her section and what kind of cookies they’re going to buy. She’ll go up the aisle and say, ‘Well, this section needs a lot of peanut butter.’ Or, ‘This section I need a lot of oatmeal’.”
The day I met The Cookie Lady, 2018 (Photo by a random fan.)
Kizito inherited her keen business acumen from her father Yesero “He was a Horatio Alger guy,” Bartlett said. “He had a second or third-grade education. He started with a business on a bicycle. Then he bought a motorcycle. He eventually bought a block factory and made bricks and cinder blocks. He bought a bakery from a white French guy who retired and went back to France. Mr. Kizito had been distributing his bread. By the time he died, he had all these businesses and bread trucks with “Kizito” on the side of the trucks driving all over Uganda. He was kind of famous. He died just a couple of years after Elizabeth came to America.”
Elizabeth has two children. Brian, 36, works in development with the NCAA in Indianapolis. He was an Academic All-American at Xavier University in Cincinnati. He played professional basketball in Germany. Yesero, 23, is a senior at the University of Louisville. He is majoring in history and make take over the business someday.
In spirit, “The Cookie Lady” has a much larger family.
“I was overwhelmed so many people came out for the Cookie Lady,” she said. “I didn’t expect that many people. People were still waiting (for autographs) when the stadium was closing down. I loved the bobblehead. She looks so pretty.” The first 3,000 fans received complimentary bobbleheads.
“They ran out, so we’re putting in another order,” she said. Kizito’s bakery is in the back of her Kizito Cookies crafts and gift shop at 1398 Bardstown Rd., not far from downtown Louisville. She also bakes granola and muffins at the store, which she opened with her husband in 1989. Kizito plans to stock more bobbleheads at their shop. Bartlett admitted, “The store is confusing to a lot of people. They look in the window and think it’s an African art gallery. Then they come in and get hit by that bakery smell. We like that.
“Elizabeth has been in business for so long and so many people in town have helped her. We have a tee-shirt that says ‘I know The Cookie Lady Personally.’ Everyone loves that shirt because everyone feels a personal connection.”
Elizabeth’s mother Julia first visited Louisville after the business had been in operation for five years. Elizabeth and Todd did not have a brick and mortar store. “Elizabeth was selling out of her basket and a pushcart on the street,” Bartlett said. “She was embarrassed to tell her Mom. The family had put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into getting her to America and paying for her education. Then one day the mayor came up and hugged Elizabeth. He gave her mom a key to the city. Stuff like that started happening. Her mom was, ‘Hey, there might be something to this’.” Indeed. In 2017, the Louisville magazine Tops estimated her company’s worth at nearly half a million dollars.
Future cookie kids (Photo by D. Hoekstra)
Kizito had never seen a baseball game until she started vending at Slugger Field. “When I go by the player’s dugouts they look at me and I give them a cookie,” she said. Bartlett added, “I’m not sure if she’s given a cookie to anyone famous but Deion Sanders played here a couple of times. (Former White Sox-Red) Adam Dunn.” Former Cubs catcher Jody Davis is the current Bats manager and his ex-teammate Leon Durham is the Bats hitting coach.
Kizito also sells cookies from a booth at the Kentucky State Fair (Aug, 15-25 at the Kentucky Expo Center in Louisville) and she made one stab at selling cookies from the infield of the Kentucky Derby.
“It rained,” she said. “I’d like to do it again.” Bartlett added, “The infield is not necessarily a family atmosphere. We did okay. It was a learning experience. You can’t resupply in the infield so the master vendor dictates what you can bring in. It is a little bit tough for smaller vendors because you have to bring in a lot of product.”
Everyone gets sad in life. What does “The Cookie Lady” do when she is blue?
She laughed and answered. “I watch TV and go to sleep.”
You can bet her dreams are sweet.
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