Name: Sarah and Chris Grosboll
City of residence: Johnstown
Occupation: Owners of Mary’s Mountain Cookies’ Johnstown store
How long have you lived in Johnstown? What brought you to this area?
Sarah: We moved to the Johnstown/Milliken community 23 years ago. We got married, and we bought a house in Milliken. We lived there for 11 years and then decided to move to Johnstown, and we’ve been here for 12 years now. We always wanted to start a business here in our community because we love it so much. Mary’s evolved for us about three years ago.
What drew you to open a cookie business?
Sarah: I’m a native of Fort Collins, and Mary’s is originally from Fort Collins, so I grew up with it. I worked at a place in the mall, and that’s where Mary’s initially started. We had always wanted to start a business here in Johnstown; we just weren’t sure what to bring to the community. We talked to Mary, and it evolved really quickly.
What makes this Mary’s Mountain Cookies location unique?
Chris: Downtown Johnstown is very quaint, and there hasn’t been anything like this. Yes, there’s a donut store in town, but there hasn’t been any dessert kind of thing. Because of the success we’ve seen through the Fort Collins store with Sarah’s good friend Lynette, we just thought, “You know what, why don’t we do something like that in our community?” We love this place so much, and we wanted to give back to it. I think what makes our product unique is that it’s a home-baked product that anybody can make in their kitchens. And the name Mary’s Mountain Cookies, if you say it, probably seven out of 10 people from Colorado know what it is.
Do you make the dough yourself?
Chris: I do. I’m on my knees back there 10 hours a week, making the dough fresh. You have to have good dough if you want to have good cookies. That’s probably the most important part of it.
Sarah: I think that’s what separates us from other cookie places: that it’s homegrown here in the store. We don’t source it out, so it’s always fresh. If your dough is not good, your cookies aren’t good. We’re really grateful that Chris makes great dough.
Chris: I’m a little bit of a control freak. I need to let that go to someone else, but I’m not quite ready.
How do you get out into the community?
Sarah: We have a cookie van, so we’re able to bake and seal some of our products. We put them in the van and take them pretty much anywhere that wants us. We love giving back to our Johnson/Milliken community and any other organization besides ours. We do a lot of football games at Roosevelt High School, and in return, we donate a percentage of the sales back to the school or the school program. We do that with pretty much any program or organization that is willing to do something like that with us. It’s too hard as a small business to donate cash to people all the time, so we love to be able to give back with the van. We also do cookie dough fundraisers for organizations, where we give a portion back to individuals who are raising money for gymnastics, baseball, music and other things like that. It was really important to us when we opened the store that we’d be able to give back somehow.
Chris: Sometimes we do two events in a day. It’s not uncommon that we’ll do something during lunch at a high school, then that night we might do another event at an apartment complex. Follow us on social media because we’re the only store that has a cookie van and a store in Colorado.
Sarah, what is your role on the board of the Johnstown Downtown Development Association?
Sarah: I felt like it was important to be a part of that board and be invested in the downtown area. We’ve been members since we opened up here, so when a board position opened up last year, I applied for it. I love that I’m able to give input based on my business and that we get feedback from other businesses. We do four annual events every year. We have our Fall Fest, where we shut down Parish Avenue and have vendors. We have a dunk tank, which is really fun—basically the kids get to dunk their principals and teachers in our school district—so that’s a good thing to get the community involved. Like any small town, your downtown is the heart of your town, so we just want to make sure that our downtown thrives with our customers and our businesses. Being a part of that really lets me be at the forefront of what’s going on down here and have a voice in it, not only as a business owner, but also as an advocate for other businesses down here.
What do you love most about Johnstown?
Chris: We’ve been here for 23 years, and we consider Milliken and Johnstown the same since they’re two miles apart. We bought our first home here. It was where our kids were in the school systems. It’s a place where we have a lot of friends and family who have businesses down here as well. You feel really tied to the community. We have a lot of friends still who were our kids’ first-, second- and third-grade teachers and high school teachers. Once you’re in this community, you’re a part of it. You don’t really want to not be part of it, and you don’t feel like there are any other communities that are like this. I’m sure there are, but it’s a very close-knit community that has a lot of pride. There are a lot of great people here.
Sarah: I’d piggyback on that. Northern Colorado is booming, and it’s big, and everyone wants to be a part of it somehow. We are growing, like it or not, but we still have that hometown feel, and I think that’s why I love being an owner of Mary’s. It is a hometown business. It’s a smaller local community, and obviously we can branch out with our van. Everyone supports everybody. It’s a really great place to live and have your family grow up.
Chris: We have great customers. We have our boys too. My oldest manages the store, and my youngest manages outside accounts. We always get great feedback from our customers. They say, “I was in your store two weeks ago,” and we’re like, “Oh no,” and they’re like, “Those young men are so nice and kind.” We love hearing that.
If you had a friend or family member visiting Johnstown for the weekend, what are some things you’d take them to go do?
Sarah: We have a new golf course opening just south of here called Bella Ridge Golf Course, so that’s going to be an amazing and beautiful addition to our Johnstown community. I would say you’ve got to hit up our Roosevelt Rough Riders in a sport of some sort. We have a brand-new school as of the last couple of years, so we have a great field and stadium for that. I would say to hit some of the local restaurants, coffee shops and other downtown businesses and find unique parts of the area.
Chris: I would say the same things. If you like breweries, in the Woods Supermarket, there’s a brewery from Frederick or Firestone. It’s right in the grocery store itself. It’s a great place to shop. We have a huge display of Mary’s Mountain Cookies out there. Even though we’re fairly close, it’s far enough out, so it makes sense. I would also walk up and down Main Street and just check out some of the great shops and businesses that are here.
Do you have a favorite cookie?
Sarah: The fall season is approaching, and we’re reintroducing the pumpkin chocolate chip cookie back into our case, which is by far my favorite cookie. We don’t get it year-round, so when it’s here, that is one I’m eating frequently. We’ll keep our pumpkin chocolate chip cookie through Christmas, then it’ll be gone for the year, which is very sad. But then we have other ones that come in. My main staple that’s in the case all the time is probably the peanut butter cup.
Chris: We rotate holiday flavors probably every three months, so there’s some sort of new seasonal cookie. One of my favorites is the Grinch, which is our Andes mint cookie, and it’s green. You look at it, and you’re like, “Oh my gosh,” but it’s one of the most phenomenal mint cookies you’ll ever eat. So the Grinch cookie or the Cowboy Monster, which is peanut butter, oats, chocolate chip, M&Ms and Reese’s Pieces.
Which flavors are fan favorites?
Sarah: We’re definitely a peanut butter community. We have probably four different peanut butter cookies in the case. The peanut butter cup is super popular. We have the Charlie Brown, which is a peanut butter cookie half dipped in milk chocolate. And then there’s the Cowboy Monster. So I would say we’re a peanut butter town. Then we have a frosted Oreo, and that’s pretty popular as well, and a blueberry oat that we keep stocked all the time.
Is there anything else you offer that people might not know about?
Sarah: We do cinnamon rolls here at our store every single day. We don’t do the Mary’s brownies like some of the other local stores do. We do our cinnamon rolls, and they are super popular. If you’ve never tried a cinnamon roll, you need to because they are to die for.
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