Baked by Brown Butter Makes Its Dewey’s Debut

PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF BAKED BY BROWN BUTTER

Payton Megowen, owner of Baked by Brown Butter, had no way of knowing that a family friend’s purchasing a box of her baked goods would lead to the biggest collaboration of her baking career thus far.

When her sister’s godfather—a general manager at several Dewey’s Pizza locations—became a regular customer, Megowen brought up the idea of adding her cookies as a dessert on the pizza chain’s menu. He offered to set up a meeting.

After a previous proposal with another larger business had fallen through, Megowen was excited to finally take the next step with her bakery. “We were talking with a different company, and that was going to be a huge thing,” she recalls. “They wanted us to be in 320 locations. Honestly, looking back, it would have been a huge jump for us. I would have been nervous about over-promising. [With] Dewey’s, I felt like that was a lot more manageable. I was like, ‘we can do this.’”

Starting this month, customers at Dewey’s Oakley, Union, Clifton, and Covington locations can try Megowen’s classic brown butter chocolate chip cookies.

The idea of working with a local business like Dewey’s was especially meaningful for the Terrace Park native. Founded in Oakley in 1998, the pizzeria has multiple locations across the tri-state and in other Midwestern cities, including Cleveland, Columbus, Kansas City, and St. Louis.

“The fact that it’s a local place and we’re local, it just meant something to me,” she says. “I love Dewey’s so this is awesome. I get to go to Dewey’s and have my cookies. That’s amazing.”

After graduating from Mariemont High School, Megowen attended the University of Tennessee for her undergraduate studies, before returning to the city to earn her master’s degree in speech pathology from the University of Cincinnati.

After finishing her master’s, she wanted to take a break. Her fiancé Justin suggested going all in on her lifelong dream of being a baker.

PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF BAKED BY BROWN BUTTER

“I would always help my dad with pancakes growing up, just little things like that,” she recalls. “But cookies, I think was more middle school. I remember watching The Bachelor and The Bachelorette with my parents, and on premiere and finale nights. I would always bake cookies and people would come over. Baking has always been part of my life.”

Last year, Megowen launched Baked by Brown Butter, selling her baked goods at festivals.

“We [would] travel around and do festivals, and we got a lot of good feedback,” she notes. “Then we started an online store that ships nationwide. I also do drop boxes for holidays and different fun themes. Like for St. Patrick’s Day, I did an Andy’s Mint cookie, it was green, I did a Lucky Charms cookie, and brown butter chocolate chip.”

Even as her order numbers grow, Megowen’s process stays the same—new batches are baked every day and she never relies on frozen ingredients.

While Dewey’s partnership is the business’s largest collaboration yet, Baked by Brown Butter is no stranger to high-volume orders. Subscription boxes and corporate gifting options on her website.

PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF BAKED BY BROWN BUTTER

Last year, Megowen baked around 700 cookies for various companies during the holidays, an experience that has laid the groundwork for what comes next.

With four Dewey’s locations on board, she’s ready to scale up with a cookie platter of four 1.5 ounce cookies and a glass of milk. “It’s perfect for birthdays because I feel like Dewey’s gets a lot of celebrations and groups,” she says. “It’s easy to split, just like grab a cookie.”

In the future, Megowen hopes to collaborate with more local businesses, keeping her focus on Cincinnati-based partnerships.

“I’ve been trying to brainstorm what our best target audience is for cookies,” she says. “I feel like coffee shops [and] bodegas would be perfect because we package our cookies too, so it could be a grab-and-go situation.”

Even while thinking of expansion, Megowen is especially proud of this local start. “Dewey’s, they have my heart,” she says. “Just something where it has a community, and people go in and sit down, have something be a regular on the menu.”