About BAK'D
Cookies bought me an opportunity once.
Now they buy them for
someone else.
BAK'D by McKinney Makes is a social-impact bakery in McKinney, Texas, making custom-printed and decorated cookies for corporate gifting, client appreciation, and events across DFW — and reinvesting a percentage of every order's profit into opportunity for girls and young women.
2021
Founded — six years of
continuous operation
6,300
Cookies delivered for
a single corporate client
3
Small on purpose
family-operated team
5
Fortune 500 industries
served
Why cookies
A batch of cookies
changed the trajectory of
my life.
homemade
I grew up in New York City, one of four kids, in a house where both parents worked.
When I was seventeen, I was chosen to travel to China through a nonprofit that ran study-abroad programs at my high school. Most of it was subsidized. Not all of it.
So my mother baked cookies out of our kitchen and sold them — to family, friends, neighbors, coworkers, anyone who would buy a box. My father delivered them. I remember helping bake and package them, boxes covering the kitchen table.
It was my first time on a plane and my first time out of the country. The Great Wall, Tiananmen Square, Beijing — places I had only seen in textbooks became real and reachable. I went on to major in history with a focus on Asian Studies and studied the language and culture for four years. That trip put me in rooms I wouldn't have known existed.
My parents were the first entrepreneurs I ever saw. They just didn't call it that.
That's the whole reason this company exists. Not a cause we adopted after the fact — the actual mechanism that got me here, ran in reverse for someone else.
What the name means
BAK'D is my mother's recipe, written as a standard.
It's also the promise we make on every order. Scratch-made, no added preservatives or shelf stabilizers
— the same cookie at volume that it is at a single dozen.
B
Best ingredients
A
Accessible
K
Kindly crafted
D
Delicious
Three years in, one of our longest-running corporate clients said it plainly: there was always some new flavor, and the quality hadn't dropped.
FORTUNE 100 TECHNOLOGY COMPANY • MONTHLY CLIENT
Who you're working with
Small, on
purpose.
Verandah McKinney
FOUNDER & CEO
Three-time published author and performance poet. More than a decade as a teacher, coach, and school leader. She runs the business.
Ron McKinney Jr.
COO & CISO
USAF veteran and cyber security professional leading operations and information security. Also the person who bet on BAK'D in its earliest stage.
And one more
BAKING & ADMINISTRATION
A third family member on production and admin — which is what makes a December 6,300 cookie order for a single client possible without a factory.
When you email us, you're emailing someone who can make a decision. There is no account manager, no ticket queue, and no one who has to check with someone else about your order.
do good, eat cookies
A percentage of every order is reinvested into opportunities for girls and young women from historically underserved communities — because cost should never be a barrier to participate fully in society.​
​
We know exactly what that's worth. It's the reason this company has a founder.
Where it goes
Right now, that means the
CreateHer
Foundation
BAK'D helps fund CreateHer's C4Her college tour, which takes girls to see campuses they might otherwise only read about. We've supported it two years running and doubled our commitment in 2026.
​
In September 2025, Verandah sat on the panel at CreateHer's Boss Girl Loading Entrepreneur Summit, talking to a room full of teenage girls about building a business.
​
A trip changed the direction of one seventeen-year-old's life. BAK'D doubles down on this idea in order to impact the world.
BOSS GIRL LOADING ENTREPRENEUR SUMMIT • SEPTEMBER 2025
