Abbi Nichols’ decision to move her bakery from social media to a physical storefront was born mostly out of necessity. 

Before she opened Abbikadabbi’s Baking in Southaven last month , Abbi found herself preparing 500 to 800 cookies a week — on top of orders for customized birthday and wedding cakes — all in her mother’s kitchen.

Weekly requests for “petticakes” petit fours could easily top 200.

Teen baker finds entrepreneurial success is sweet

And on Thanksgiving Day, more than 50 customers visited her house for personalized orders. 

“They were lined up down the street,” Abbi said shortly after opening her brick-and-mortar store. “We were busting at the seams, to be honest.” 

As business came to a close on a recent Thursday, inventory was sold out for the third consecutive day. When the last customer came in to buy all of the remaining snowman cookies, she left with only two. 

“We didn’t think we’d be opening just before Christmas, but we’ve been planning,” said Traci Nichols, Abbi’s mother and business partner. 

That led to a more permanent location in a growing retail area around Snowden Grove.

Those plans began long before the mother-daughter team decided to open a storefront. The earliest clue that Abbi would one day open a bakery is a design taped to a cabinet in the Nichols’ Olive Branch home.

Technically, the design is more like a sketch — which Abbi drew as a child — of a bakery she envisioned owning. 

“It’s just a scratch piece of paper, but all of this is that vision,” Traci said. 

Recipe Exchange: Ice Cream Brownie Sundae Pie

Abbi began baking on her own around age 12 on a whim. A few years later, after eating a bland cookie from the grocery store, she had an idea that would eventually lead to a profitable business.

“I told my mom, ‘Every cookie that is cute and has decorations is either hard or just has no taste,’” Abbi said. “I wanted to find a recipe that not only looks good but tastes good at the same time.” 

Today, Abbi says that initial commitment to quality serves as the guiding principle behind all of her products, which have become in demand online. 

“I’ve been asked about franchising if I would want to open another location, but I don’t want to jeopardize the taste,” Abbi said. “I would never want to franchise to the point where we’d use additives and the product tastes horrible. 

“That’s not what Abbikadabbi’s tastes like.”

Abbi began selling baked goods out of Traci’s kitchen during her junior year of high school, promoted through social media. By her senior year, she’d made enough money to buy her first KitchenAid mixer. 

“I don’t know what I would have done without that,” Abbi said of her first industrial-level purchase. As a teenager, Abbi continued to turn a profit, which enabled her to continue investing in her online store. 

The Nichols’ cottage business continued as Abbi moved to Oxford to attend Ole Miss, coming home on the weekends to work with Traci on fulfilling orders. 

Then, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Abbi moved back home and completed her sophomore year of college virtually.

Recipe Exchange: Jennifer Chandler’s Bourbon-Chocolate Pecan Pie

That year, the Nichols got a taste of running their bakery full-time. When Abbi returned to campus the following year, she was determined more than ever to turn her entrepreneurial ambitions into a reality.

“I took an entrepreneurship class,” Abbi said. “I always knew I wasn’t made for a desk job, and the idea of having my own business just made sense.”

Before graduating, she placed twice in the top six of the Gillespie Business Plan Competition for Ole Miss students, winning grant money she used to reinvest in Abbikadabbi’s. 

Abbi and Traci then began taking on corporate clients after buying an edible printer, allowing them to quickly produce products featuring various logos. Now, they count FedEx among their corporate clients.

“I love the printer and what we can do with that, but I’ll tell you the truth, I love the detail of her work even better,” Traci said. 

A commitment to quality, on top of a rapidly growing business, left the mother-daughter team with no other option than to expand physically from Traci’s kitchen to a retail space. 

“We would ask, ‘Are we going to overgrow this?’” Traci said. “It got to the point that we were just on top of each other. If she was mixing, I couldn’t cook. If I was cooking, she couldn’t mix.”

During their search for a storefront, Traci spoke with Scott Gill with SMJ Enterprise, the company behind the more than 200,000-square-foot Top of the Sipp project under construction in the heart of Southaven’s burgeoning Snowden District, about bringing the bakery to the development. 

“We didn’t know at the time that Scott was building something or that they even bought this land,” Abbi said. “And one day my mom was talking to him about it, and he said, ‘Well, if you just hold on for a second, I think I have something for you.’”

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That something was a new storefront nestled between what will eventually be a Walk-Ons Sports Bistreaux to their south and a pickleball facility inspired by entertainment complexes like Topgolf to their north. Both sites are under construction, and SMJ plans to continue adding more entertainment to the already-growing, 16-acre planned development. 

And as their neighborhood continues to grow, Abbi and Traci plan to continue expanding their business. 

“Eventually we would like to be able to ship and begin to just expand it even more,” Traci said. 

Already, Abbikadabbi’s has started to offer events like cookie baking classes for kids, and the Nicholses plan to eventually host tea parties.

“When I was doing the business competitions in college, my whole goal was to be the cookie person in the Southeast,” Abbi said. “At the same time, our quality will always remain the same, the same taste as when we started.”

And while Traci looks forward to what comes next, her pride in Abbi’s ambition began years ago, when they were working out of her kitchen.

“My husband and I have always been incredibly proud of what she’s doing,” Traci said. “There’s not enough words to describe what she’s accomplished or how far she’s come. This has always been her passion, and I just get to watch her bring it to life.”