Tin Lizzie cookies expanding in Louisville

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Baking and physical therapy may seem like dissonant pursuits, but for Lizzie Klem Kelly they have always gone hand-in-hand.

Kelly works as a physical therapist at Norton Hospital, but when she's not helping patients she's baking cookies for her business, Tin Lizzie Baked Goods.

"The buttercream frosted sugar cookies are like my bread and butter," Kelly said. "I do a variety of other cookie flavors as well, but that's like my main one. Everybody else seems to be doing the royal icing, which is like the flooded hardened (icing). I use homemade buttercream frosting, so I can't get as detailed as the royally iced cookies, but I think they taste better."

Tin Lizzie products can be purchased at Paul's Fruit Market and Cafe Commons, a coffee shop in Norton Commons that Louisville Business First wrote about in July. The cookies are also available online.

Tin Lizzie cookies sell for $25 for a box of a dozen, and $28 to have them individually wrapped.

Kelly was born in Cincinnati, but she grew up in Louisville. After graduating from Sacred Heart High School, she received her undergraduate and graduate degrees from Bellarmine University.

"I come from a very large family where growing up we were alway making desserts, hosting parties," she explained. "When I got into PT school, I started baking more and more. I would take my cookies to my clinics and share them with clinical instructors and classmates. I was the one always bringing desserts when we had potlucks."

It was one of Kelly's clinical instructors who first suggested that Kelly start selling her cookies. She didn't think much of the idea until her boyfriend, now husband, made the same thing.

"That was about four years ago," she remembered. "At the time I decided to create just a Facebook page and started posting pictures here and there. Every couple of weeks, I would get a couple dozen orders and I thought it was the coolest thing, you know, a little extra pocket money when I was in school."

Kelly got married in December 2019, and moved her baking business to her own home. She graduated from Bellarmine with her physical therapy degree in May 2020.

She worked full-time at Norton until January of this year when she started working less hours so she could try to take her wholesale baking business to the next level. Unfortunately, the Tin Lizzie name was not inspired by the rock band Thin Lizzy, but from the fact that she planned to sell her products in tin cookie bins.

"Between January and March, I really kind of tooled around, did some research with the labeling requirements to see if I really wanted to try to take this step," she said. "Then I decided to kind of give Paul's Fruit Market a cold call. I met with the gourmet buyer and she was like ecstatic looking at the cookie. She was like, 'I want them in here next week.'"

The only problem was that Kelly needed a commercial kitchen to make her bakery legitimate. Luckily, she worked out at the same gym as Blakey Nutt Martin, co-owner of Sissy Cakes, another new business that I recently covered.

Sissy Cakes had rented space at the restaurant incubator Chef's Space after its products got into Paul's Fruit Market. Kelly decided to follow the same path.

Rental fees at the incubator run from $25 an hour to $1,200 a month depending on the membership level.

Kelly said going from a home kitchen to a commercial facility has greatly increased her capacity.

"I have had to purchase more cookie sheets," she said. "I can bake 12 dozen cookies at once now rather than the three I was making in my home."

Tin Lizzie Baked Goods also offers catering for special events. Kelly said hopefully the next progress of her business will be to open a brick-and-mortar store.

National rum brand Saltwater Woody is trying to keep the summer party going by introducing Saltwater Woody Grilled Pineapple rum.

Made with real fruit juice and Saltwater Woody rum, Saltwater Woody Grilled Pineapple boasts sweet and smoky notes that pair well with the menu for a summer cookout. The sweet, tropical spirit joins the existing trio of Saltwater Woody rums — Saltwater Woody Original, Saltwater Woody Real Grapefruit and Saltwater Woody Real Lemon.

"The introduction of Grilled Pineapple will provide flavored rum enthusiasts the chance to fall in love with Saltwater Woody all over again. Grilled Pineapple embodies tropical paradise, and we can't wait for consumers to experience the smoked sweetness and natural fruit flavors in what's sure to be a new summer favorite," said Paul Heintzman, co-founder of Saltwater Woody, said in a press release.

To find these products or any product by Saltwater Woody, consumers can visit SaltwaterWoody.com.