Oatmeal cookies were ticket to success for this Tacoma entrepreneur expanding to Point Ruston
Nearly 20 years ago, after being laid off from an accounting job at Capital One for the first time, Karina Blasco tried to start her own business selling homemade oatmeal cookies. She used her severance to get the concept off the ground.
She remembered baking three batches of these cookies as a little girl. She vaguely remembered the recipe; she definitely remembered the response.
“Oh, Ri, you bake the oatmeal cookies!” family and friends would implore her. She packed Easter baskets with cookies baked in her church’s kitchen, eventually landing slots at the local grocery chain Tacoma Boys, a teriyaki restaurant and a few coffee shops.
That was in 2003. She was 24, and with her husband, had a toddler and an infant.
“Life was pretty hard back then. I was young; my kids were young. One day I was just like, ‘I can’t do this,’” Blasco told The News Tribune in an interview last month. “I really thought I was going to be this awesome business owner and this awesome stay-at-home mom. I didn’t realize how huge the stay-at-home part was.
“Working a job is way easier than staying at home with kids,” she laughed.
Blasco vowed to restart the business when the kids were older. She went back to work for Capital One, only to be laid off again in 2011.
This time around, she hesitated to attempt another run at entrepreneurship, but her uncle, a preacher, changed her mind. In a sermon, he used the credit card company’s tagline, “What’s in your wallet?”, as a metaphor for taking advantage of what you already have, of not letting talent go to waste.
The message hit her in a now-or-never kind of way.
“I came back with a website and turned my garage into my commercial kitchen,” she recalled of the ensuing months.
BEYOND OATMEAL COOKIES
In the past nine years, Only Oatmeal Creations has become a mainstay at the Tacoma Farmers Markets, particularly on Broadway. At various points, Blasco toyed with other stands, including at the outlet mall in Auburn, but none stuck. The advent of the Tacoma Night Market tipped the scale, introducing her oatmeal cookies to new audiences and reaffirming the validity of her “only oats” concept.
“I tell people this: butter, sugar, flour, eggs and oats. Five fingers,” said Blasco of her cookie recipe foundation.
From there, she offers a snickerdoodle, peanut butter and cocoa option, and she has already conjured creative takes for her forthcoming storefront at The Public Market at Point Ruston: think spiced Mexican chocolate, mocha and lemon.
“When people think of oatmeal cookies, they think of oatmeal raisin,” she explained. “That’s why I don’t sell an oatmeal raisin cookie.”
From the beginning, she has swapped the plain shriveled grape for a chocolate-covered version — her favorite of a roster now featuring an array of fixings such as caramel apple, peanut butter chips, toffee and almonds.
Customers can order custom cookies online, too, but the 400-square-foot Point Ruston bakery will provide more space for more cookies and other oatmeal creations, bringing the concept full-circle.
Similar to a frozen yogurt shop, Only Oatmeal at Point Ruston will feature a toppings bar to complement bowls of warm or overnight oats. It also will serve edible cookie dough and homemade granola, available in parfaits and in takeaway bags. Also are on the docket are bars, muffins and cupcakes, as well as hot and iced coffee with flavored milks for even more customization.
“I’m waiting for God to send me a baker,” said Blasco.
Here she will expand to more gluten-free and vegan options. Her standard recipe combines oats with all-purpose flour, but she has successfully substituted oat flour in her sugar cookie base.
The icing on the cake — er, cookie — will be an oat-based ice cream in collaboration with a local shop she couldn’t yet divulge.
“In opening up the store, I don’t believe that we can just survive on just cookies,” she said.
THE RIGHT PLACE
Blasco has been dreaming since 2012 of opening a shop in a public market like the one that recently soft-opened at Point Ruston. She didn’t know then that it would actually happen.
“I’ve had my eye on Ruston before it was even a thing,” she said, recalling her first visit to University Village in Seattle. “When I open a cookie store, it needs to be in a place like this, a place where you know you’re going to get good things, quality things.”
Tacoma didn’t have such a place, but Blasco trusted it would happen — someday.
“It’s been a journey. I never wanted to compromise. I never wanted to take shortcuts. There’s some ways I believe it could be done: I just wasn’t willing to go about it any other way. Through patience and faith and staying power, you know what I’m sayin’?”
It’s taken so long, she said, in part because she only dedicated herself full-time to the business about three years ago and in part because she never wanted to take on debt.
Once construction at The Public Market is complete, she is confident the decade’s work will have been worth it.
“There’s an oatmeal shop on Ruston,” she imagines people saying. “I think that’s what’s gonna happen.”
ONLY OATMEAL CREATIONS
▪ Details: bakery and oatmeal bar at The Public Market at Point Ruston expected fall 2020
▪ Order: cookies online at onlyoatmeal.com (not available at Tacoma Farmers Market this year)
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This story was originally published July 23, 2020 at 5:00 AM.