Featured on Oprah Daily, this Jamaican American quit her job to start a Caribbean-flavored vegan cookie business

Jamaican-American, Danielle Tubbs of Chicago, quit her day job to focus on growing her vegan cookie business, Tubby’s Taste, after being featured on Oprah Daily. Tubbs, whose heritage includes many bakers, African Americans and Jamaicans, has always taken cookie making seriously, and now she draws on her experience as inspiration for a unique line of cookies that reflect the flavors and memories of his childhood. For example, her chocolate chip cookie is inspired by her grandmother’s Christmas morning chocolate tea, and her oatmeal raisin cookie is based on her mother’s rum cake.

Tubbs grew up in Miami, Florida, in a traditional Jamaican home where her aunts made rum and dark cakes. She comes “from a long line of Jamaican cake ladies,” she said, adding that baking is in her blood. During her childhood, she was always involved in the operation of making holiday cakes. This is how she learned her family’s baking secrets, such as keeping secret bottles of rum for soaking the fruit used in the black cake.

She launched Tubby’s Taste in 2014, targeting niche market demand for Jamaican flavors including mango, coconut and lime, ginger, sweet molasses, grapefruit, pineapple and hibiscus. . Each flavor triggers a specific childhood memory for her as she cooks in the commercial kitchen of Chicago’s Garfield Park Hatchery local food incubator. Tubby’s Taste – the name is based on her college nickname – started when friends and family told her they wanted her to bake vegan cookies. She revamped her recipes and developed vegan options and started selling them online.

Although she didn’t plan to focus on Jamaican flavors, she realized after moving to Chicago in 2012 that most of the flavors that appealed to her were those of her Jamaican home. Growing up with coconut palms, mangoes and sugarcane near her home had a direct influence on her cookie recipes. She told her therapist that she would like to spend all her time baking cookies if she could find a way to get paid to do so. Her therapist encouraged her to pursue that dream, and at her next therapist appointment two weeks later, Tubbs had registered a website domain name and applied for a limited liability company.

Tubbs intends to disrupt the cookie trade, which she says is somewhat homogeneous. She also believes that baking should not be underestimated in efforts to create more diversity and representation in a community. If there were more options for bakeries, she would have known that more than the usual flavors could be explored. She wouldn’t have had to settle for the usual kind of cupcakes, but could have the flavors of coconut, oats, and cinnamon reminiscent of the milkshakes she enjoyed as a child.

She added that it’s up to people to see someone like them doing something that inspires them. Then they realize they can do it too and follow their dreams.

Photo – The Taste of Tubby