She Quit the FBI to Bake Cookies, Now Customers Don't Even Reach Their Cars Before Coming Back for More

Kendall Feighan swapped a job with the FBI for a cookie counter, and the queue outside her White Plains shop has barely let up since it opened in January.

The 24-year-old from Dutchess County, New York, runs Just Chippy's at 931 North Broadway in North White Plains, a storefront she reached after two summers interning with the bureau, a full-time federal job, culinary school, and more than a year of baking from her flat.

Since the doors opened, the line has often run out the door. 'Watching people buy cookies, take a few steps toward their car while eating them, then turn right back around to grab more before they even make it there has been surreal,' Feighan told People.

From FBI Evidence Rooms to Cookie Trays

Feighan studied criminology and sociology at Virginia Tech, where she also played soccer, and was accepted into the FBI's internship programme as a sophomore. By her account, she spent two summers there, the first on an evidence squad handling material she has likened to true-crime documentaries, then took a full-time job with the bureau after graduating.

The role did not hold her. 'This is not something I see myself sticking with long term,' she recalled thinking, speaking on the Sons of Saturday podcast in April 2025, before the shop existed. 'A lot of great people within the FBI, a lot of great squads to work on,' she said, 'but wasn't for me long term.'

She left without a fallback. 'I left the job with the FBI having really no plan,' she said. Her boyfriend, she added, told her, 'I think it's time for you to go for it.' She enrolled in a food business master's programme at the Culinary Institute of America and moved to New York.

A College Habit That Became a Business

The cookies were not new. Feighan ran an earlier version of Just Chippy's while at Virginia Tech, baking for teammates and selling to fellow students before she wound it down. The name stuck because every cookie carries some kind of chip, and, she said, because it makes people smile.

She credits her old field for the standard she keeps. She has pointed to 'the overlap between the FBI and the food industry,' citing 'a lot of mislabeling ingredients, a lot of chemicals, a lot of stuff in the products that we are consuming,' and said she wanted 'a clean label with clean ingredients.'

Apartment Batches to a White Plains Storefront

Feighan relaunched from her White Plains flat in March 2025 as a registered home processor, selling online and at local farmers' markets.

Early on, she filled an order for about 3,000 cookies on roughly four days' notice, working as a two-person team with her boyfriend and sending some to a local food pantry after a batch went wrong.

She sold more than 60,000 cookies from the flat before signing for the shop, which opened on 13 January.

The ribbon-cutting fell on what would have been the birthday of her late grandfather, Sparky, who had taught her to run a childhood farm stand named Scrappy's.

Nearly every flavour honours a relative: Nan's Blueberry Best for her grandmother, Nancy 'Nan' Vaughn; Mom's PB&J for her mother; and Sparky's Sprinkles for her grandfather.

The shop runs on purple, her favourite colour.

The shop sells six core flavours alongside rotating seasonal specials, in full-size and mini versions, all baked to the thick, soft style she settled on after years of trial.

The days are long. 'I'm up at 4 a.m. every morning, and to sleep at 11,' she said, joking that she had left a nine-to-five only to work five to nine. She is not looking back. 'This is what I want to do long term and I'm really committed to making it work,' she said.