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Meet The 22-year-old Entrepreneur Behind Big Dipper Cookie Dough

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A Traverse City cookie dough company, run by a 22-year-old entrepreneur, is seeing large-scale success.

Big Dipper Cookie Dough is now being sold at 700 locations throughout the country!

And the owner says this cookie dough is completely safe to eat right out of the tub.

Mom and grandma won’t need to worry about a stomach ache for this sweet treat.

That’s because eggs are not included on the ingredient list.

“I got the idea in January of 2015 up popped a recipe for a healthy high protein cookie dough made with chick peas,” explained Owner/Founder, Austin Groessel. “I thought that sounded terrible but the idea was great so I wrote it down.”

Knowing he always wanted to start a business, Austin came up with Big Dipper Cookie Dough Company.

“When we started in my mom’s kitchen about two years ago I decided, OK maybe a grocery store here in town,” said Groessel.

Now, Big Dipper cookie dough has spread to 12 different states and about 700 stores.

The craziest number of them all?

“I’m 22 right now,” said Goessel.

Age, or lack thereof, while impressive – comes with its struggles.

“The staffing is very tricky,” explained Groessel. “We are all smart, we learn quick but our biggest issue was lack of experience. “We just don’t have life experience that an older business professional has.”

So they’re filling in the blanks where they can.

“We’ve gone to business workshops,” said employee, Katie Fink. “We actually just got back from Boston to learn more productive methods.”

“So it’s been a ride, ya know, to work with the guys we do help grow with them and I mean the whole thing it’s been a trip. It’s been a journey, ya know, something I’ve always wanted to do and kind of a trial by fire,” explained Groessel. “Ya know it’s my baby, I wanna see it grow.”

For a list of the place you can find big dipper cookie dough, .