Good cause cookies: Opportunity Village continues treat sales despite website woes

Some cookies are made with chocolate chips. Some have peanut butter. No matter the type, Opportunity Village says it adds its own magical ingredient: love.

Its slogan is, “Our cookies taste as good as they make you feel.” That’s because 100 percent of the proceeds support individuals with intellectual disabilities.

But selling the cookies and thrift shop items to the public has hit a snag. Opportunity Village’s website has not been able to process cookie sales for nearly a year. So, the nonprofit sent out eBlasts that items are available by calling 702-880-4014 for edible items or 702-262-1515 for artwork, silk ties and scarves.

“The website did not shut down; we just experienced a glitch recently with our e-commerce functionality,” said Marty Wood, director of marketing for Opportunity Village, 6300 W. Oakey Blvd. “We are actually having our entire site revamped in the very near future, which will allow for online purchases of Cookie Crafters cookies, PopShoppe Gourmet Chocolate Covered Popcorn, Lunch Bunch boxed lunches and artwork, including scarves and ties made by our talented (workers).”

The baking operation takes place at Opportunity Village’s Engelstad campus, 6050 S. Buffalo Drive, where the premade cookie dough arrives as refrigerated “pucks.” The nine workers — called OVIPs, which stands for Opportunity Village Important Persons — begin baking around 7 a.m. The OVIPs line the baking sheets with parchment paper and place the pucks in uniform rows, overseen by five monitors, before baking them. Once packaged, labels proclaim, “Baked and packaged with love by individuals with disabilities at Opportunity Village.”

“It gives them job training skills,” Wood said. “Ultimately, the goal is to put individuals with disabilities to work out in the community … so they can eventually be independent.”

Kelly Datzer, food service training center manager, said the OVIPs were offered the kitchen positions as they displayed a higher capacity for work.

“They get paid by piece rate, so however many pieces they do (determines) how much money they make,” she said.

Opportunity Village began baking the cookies — chocolate chip, peanut butter, oatmeal raisin, Snickerdoodle and M&M styles — about five years ago. Apple Vending, which supplies food in vending machines, is one of its bigger clients. Opportunity Village was already supplying boxed salads and sandwiches when it decided to add cookies.

The goal is to eventually make up the batter at the Opportunity Village kitchen.

“The talent is here; it’s just the patience of teaching them,” Datzer said.

The kitchens take up 4,000 square feet of the 85,000-square-foot complex.

Opportunity Village client Angela switched from the work center where she and others combine coffee condiments for hotel rooms or put together projects such as mailings. She said she likes the kitchen work better.

“I get to stand up and do a lot of different things,” she said.

Catherine, an OVIP who wants to work at Disneyland, said that as tempting as the cookies smell, “I don’t eat them.”

Mira, another OVIP, said it’s a great way to make new friends but that lifting the heavy boxes “makes my arms hurt.”

About three years ago, Opportunity Village added flavored popcorn to its offerings, available around the winter holidays.

A tin with six cookies is $9.99, and a tin with 12 cookies is $15.99. The deluxe tin is $16.99 and features 12 cookies along with seasonal candies and nuts.

For more information about Opportunity Village, visit opportunityvillage.org.

Editor’s note: Last names of Opportunity Village clients were withheld by request.

Contact Summerlin Area View reporter Jan Hogan at jhogan@viewnews.com or 702-387-2949.