Mike Evans began his entrepreneurial life by selling cookies from a vending machine. He formerly worked as a DJ, proprietor of a party bus company, and restaurant manager. Nevertheless, when the global pandemic struck, he found himself out of employment.
While sitting at home doing nothing, he considered his next move: selling cookies through a vending machine. He told Business Journal that the idea for selling cookies came to him in a dream.
“The idea came to me in a dream where I had a warm cookie vending machine. And then, more recently, I had a guy reach out to me, and he said, ‘I had a dream about a warm cookie vending machine, and I went online, and you were the first person to pop up.’ I responded like, ‘I had a dream about it too, man,’” he said. A few months later, it became a reality.
According to the Business Journal, he earned more than $40,000 selling cookies from his vending machine. As a result of his success, he decided to expand his business by opening an Alibi Cookies storefront, with ambitions to eventually add other storefronts and vending machines.
Cookies with an Alibi Warm cookies in various varieties such as chocolate chunk, oatmeal, and raisin are always available in shops and vending machines. According to Black Business, they also come in distinctive flavors like double chocolate mint pumpkin spice and deluxe apple pie.
Evans says he plans to reach a $1 million target in annual revenue soon. The 33-year-old adds that he is proud of his achievement thus far, taking notice of how he started small in his hometown.
“It’s crazy to me that some of the people I went to school with that got straight A’s and went to college — they’re not on the same level as me now. They don’t own their own business. That’s something I think about all the time. People say, ‘Oh, you gotta go to college,’ and ‘You didn’t go to college, so you’re not gonna be anything.’ And I’m just like, ‘I’m some inner-city Black kid, and I’m doing this.’”
Evans was raised on the north side of St. Louis. Growing up as an inner-city child, he faced many challenges of not only being black but being in the city. Nonetheless, he managed to achieve entrepreneurial success at the age of 33.
