BILLINGS — It’s not your average cookie.
Hot Mess Cookies, a new Rimrock Mall shop, serves its specialty hot and fresh daily: 4-ounce cookies made with real butter.
Mouthwatering, delicious treats.
“Awesome, delicious," said Tiffany Binford, a customer with her two children, on Tuesday. "(My kids are) excited now and ready to go shopping for Mom."
Hot Mess Cookies opened its doors in late July. This is its first Montana location, with two other shops in Wyoming and Missouri.
“A good friend of mine who’s also a partner, we’ve always wanted to do a food concept together. Cookies, I mean, the model looked great. It’s kind of a transition from coming out of technology, which is where I kind of have my roots," said Jonas Vachal, the owner of Hot Mess Cookies, on Tuesday. "It’s a whole different animal. Everybody enjoys cookies, we’ll just put it that way."
Vachal said the store welcomes around 50 customers a day and there are a variety of flavors.
“Fresh baked every day. We use real butter, which is a little different than most cookie stores. They use a margarine or a shortening. We do use butter, which does mean we have to bake fresh every day," Vachal said. "We have six cookies that we always have, but we change up every month and we introduce four new ones."
A unique business in what’s now become a unique location.
"I liked the mall location just because the mall needed something like this," Vachal said. “The attendance at the mall is great. We enjoy having the foot traffic, and there’s more people here than we anticipated. So it’s great."
The Rimrock Mall, like many malls across the country, has seen a steady decline in patrons over the years.
According to the retail consulting firm Siteworks, there are only 700 malls in the U.S. still operating, down from a peak of around 2,500 locations in the 1980s. Sixty-one percent of Americans now say they prefer to shop online.
But the Rimrock Mall has hung on, in part thanks to businesses like Hot Mess Cookies.
“We are very excited to welcome Hot Mess Cookies to Rimrock Mall. We are committed to bringing unique new offerings to the center and can’t wait for the community to experience this new concept,” said Devin Hartley, senior general manager of the mall, in a press release from July.
A sweet new shop in a space that needed one.
There are options for pick up and delivery if you don't want to visit the storefront.
“We do offer both curbside pickup and custom orders. So if you want to take some to the office, if you have a barbeque or a birthday party, we can accommodate all of those requests," Vachal said. "We have staff here at nine in the morning and our curbside offering, they can get picked up as early as 9:30 a.m.”
According to Vachal, gluten-free options are coming soon, and there are always new flavors to try. The shop also sells ice cream and milkshakes.
"There’s no dessert retail outside of the food court. We brought ice cream back to the mall which has been very well received," Vachal said. "We’re happy here. The mall administration has been really great to work with, so we’re happy to be here."
To learn more about Hot Mess Cookies, click here.
“I think we’ll definitely be stopping in every time we come to the mall now!" Binford said.
