Grandma’s Cookies is a small business located on South Main Street in St. Charles that has been around since 1976.

The business started small but became bigger once it got known throughout the world with many visitors coming to the shop each year.

The current owner of the store Theresa Rubio started working there when she was only 10 years old. Her mom had a shop down the street so she would come and help Grandma whenever she had time to make some extra money.

“I would come down and help her out every day whenever I could,” Rubio said. “I made like $15 a day, back then I thought I was so rich.”

Grandma is Rubio’s cousin grandma. Grandma was running a dress shop on Main Street and to keep her children busy and entertained she would make them give away cookies at the window for free.

One day she realized that the cookies were selling better than the dresses. Shortly after, she decided to turn her hobby into a business and open her own cookie shop.

“She did that for quite some time and then she realized she was selling more cookies than she was selling dresses,” Rubio said. “Then she actually started making the cookies and then sell them out the kitchen window.”

Grandma was making a certain number of cookies and when she sold them all, she was done for the day, which is the opposite of Grandma’s Cookies today.

Rubio took Grandma’s business in 2004. The shop started off as an outside business until it was moved inside the store in 2008.

Larry Schneider is the manager of Grandma’s Cookies. He has been working at this shop for five years.

“Her idea was never to have the best cookies, it was to have the most affordable ones,” Schneider said. “If you look at our pricing, there is nobody that touches our pricing because of that. Any other cookie shop is not going to have the pricing that we have.”

Grandma would sit outside and wait for homeless people. The goal was to not only give them cookies but share her love for them and what she does.

Throughout the years, the goal remained the same, becoming Grandma’s Cookies tradition. Showing and giving love to customers is one of the shop’s top priorities.

“It’s about serving other people and doing what we love. Here at grandma’s, we feel like love and bakery are two different things because you like the food that people that loved you made you,” Schneider said. “That’s kind of like the whole philosophy that grandma was made on.”