Lake Forest-Based Hungry Monkey Baking Expands To Jewel Food Stores

LAKE FOREST, IL — A much-loved baking company launched at a Lake Forest bake sale is expanding beyond the North Shore.

Hungry Monkey Baking got its start after founder Cindy Kienzle lost her job heading up marketing and advertising at the Chicago Transit Authority while pregnant with her daughter, who would become the company's namesake.

"It really all worked out the way it's supposed to work out," Kienzle told Patch.

Kienzle was born in Evanston and raised in West Rogers Park and Niles. After graduating Niles North High School, she left town for college before returning to the Chicago area and spending the last 17 years in Lake Forest.

In the spring of 2010, shortly before her daughter's 2nd birthday, members of the local not-for-profit Lake Forest-Lake Bluff Learning Disability Association asked Kienzle to bake some items for their spring fundraiser.

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Kienzle's daughter, Lily, had recently been diagnosed with a learning disability — with her non-verbal requests for more banana bread and other treats earning her the "hungry monkey" moniker from her father, Tom.

Though she did not speak in complete sentences until age 4, Lily is now an A student at Lake Forest High School, an honors choir student and a whiz at math and science, according to her mom.

"And now she's known around town as the hungry monkey," Kienzle said. "I don't know if she likes it so much now that she's 15 and in high school."

At that first bake sale, Kienzle's baked treats sold out immediately. There, she also connected with Maria O'Rourke, then the owner of local catering company FoodLove, who offered to let Kienzle use her commercial kitchen.

Soon, she started to see a real hunger for her signature chocolate chip banana bread in the community.

"I thought maybe there's something here. People started calling me, these other moms, 'Can I have a loaf?'" she recalled. "So I thought, let me see if there's real demand."

Within a few months, Hungry Monkey baked treats were being sold at the Northfield Farmers Market and the Highwood Night Market, which allowed Kienzle more opportunities to connect with customers.

By the end of the summer of 2010, the products were in Sunset Foods, she said, thanks in large part to the support of Lake Forest area community members — from word-of-mouth marketing, to loaning equipment, to running deliveries.

"People really, really showed up, in so many ways," Kienzle said.

"It was really a lot of Lake Forest-Lake Bluff people really helping. Not only the woman who asked me to bake, another friend encouraged me, people helping me deliver," she said. "In the early days, I was baking like a crazy lunatic. I started in my home, then I ended up at this other Lake Forest mom's catering company, then I was in Highland Park, baking out of a commercial kitchen next to Carol's Cookies."

Kienzle said she was indebted to the help she received from Carol and Jeff Goldman of Carol's Cookies, farmers market advice from Kristen Weisberg of Toffee Traditions and Diane Joseph of Shekar Delights and to then-Lake Forest High School student Lauren Whalley, who helped with packing cakes and at the farmers market in the early days of the business, which now has about half a dozen part-time employees.

From Highland Park, Hungry Monkey expanded to a freestanding commercial kitchen in Northbrook. And now, with a recent deal with Jewel Food Stores, Kienzle's banana bread is coming to the shelves of 188 Jewel-Osco stores starting this week. Customers can still find it at Sunset Foods, The Grand Food Centers, the Lake Forest College market or via delivery.

Ahead of the new partnership with the grocery store chain, Hungry Monkey relocated its production again to the Kinzie Industrial Corridor on Chicago's West Side.

That has also meant stepping up production — for her first run of product for Jewel, Kienzle bought 10,000 pounds of bananas. Previously, she would buy one case from grocery stores, when available, or go from 7-Eleven store to 7-Eleven store to buy up their ripe bananas.

While the Chicago location does not have a storefront, anyone interested in Kienzle's banana bread and brownies can also purchase it online.

Kienzle said she picked up valuable marketing lessons from her 10-year stint at CTA, which followed marketing jobs for national not-for-profit associations.

"The one thing I learned from that is you have to be consistent in every consumer touchpoint, and when you're consistent in every consumer touchpoint, that's really your brand. That's your personality," she said.

"You could do whatever kind of pretty logo, it could all look nice," she said. "But if a service agent yells at a customer, it's all diminished, right?"