While walking through Janice Beinart’s kitchen, the aroma of freshly baked cookies fill the room.Half a year ago, Beinart, parent to alumna Mira Beinart (‘22) and junior Jonah Beinart, launched a cookie business out of her home called JLB (Janice Lynn Beinart) cookies.

Beinart, who works as a speech language pathologist for Adventist Healthcare, has always enjoyed baking. However, she never planned to create a business herself. When she hosted a celebration dinner a week before senior graduation, Mira requested cookies for dessert. 

“I made the cookies and both Mira and Jonah said, ‘Oh my gosh. You should start a business,’” Beinart said. 

A couple weeks later, to celebrate her cardiologist husband Sean Beinart’s birthday, which happened to be on Valentine’s Day, she baked heart shaped cookies topped with electrocardiogram lines for him to bring into his office. His co-workers loved the cookies and started to buy some for themselves. From then on, the business began to take off.  

“Then another friend [from Sean’s office] said ‘I have a daughter having an engagement party’ and she wanted five dozen cookies for the party,” Beinart said. “Between JDS graduation and a few people at my husband’s office, I decided to actually start selling the cookies.”

The state of Maryland considers her business a cottage food business, which is essentially a business run from home. Therefore there are some regulations that she must follow; she can’t sell them outside of the state of Maryland, and each package must have all of its ingredients listed.

Typically, it takes Beinart about three to four hours to bake a batch of cookies. This process includes making the dough, cutting and baking the cookies. Once the cookies form, she makes the icing and decorates the cookies. Lastly, after letting the icing dry, she seals and packages the cookies.

A dozen cookies cost $60, which includes customization and packaging too. On average, she bakes around once a week; however, there are certain periods when she finds herself baking much more than usual. For example, during graduation and college decision deadlines, she made many dozens of cookies for her daughter’s friends that were graduating and heading off to college. 

Alumna Zoe Fischman (‘22), who will attend Emory University this fall, ordered cookies for her new roommate. Fischman appreciated the freedom she had in customizing the cookies. She ordered gluten-free sugar cookies and was able to customize the colors, shapes and icons to fit the theme of Emory. 

“There was so much care and detail put into these cookies, and they clearly reflected my decisions, which could not be achieved through mass production; they were one of a kind,” Fischman said. 

Soon after her business launched, the war in Ukraine broke out. Therefore, she began to donate portions of her proceeds to charity organizations. Beinart baked a batch of blue and yellow cookies that were advertised on her website (jlbcookies.com) and her Instagram page (@jlbcookies), and all of her proceeds ($540) were donated to an organization called the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society that assists refugees around the world. 

In addition to donating to refugees, Beinart also donates her proceeds to organizations that help other disenfranchised groups. 

During Pride Month, she sold rainbow cookies and donated 10% of the money she made ($52) to the Trevor Project, an organization that focuses on suicide prevention efforts among LGBTQ youth. She also recently baked cookies with pro-choice designs, and 10% of those proceeds were donated to the organization Planned Parenthood. 

Beinart spends countless hours preparing cookies for her customers, but she cannot try the cookies she bakes because she is gluten-free and vegan. Despite that, she continues to provide for her closest friends and family as well as charitable causes around the world. 

“She just makes them just out of pure love,” Beinart. “Like she loves the look on my family’s face when we eat something that she makes and it’s amazing. She does it because she just loves making us happy.”