These Cookies Wrapped in Love Celebrate Queer Identity

For Luis Gramajo, his moment of realizing he wasn’t like other boys his age happened on the first day of school. “I was four years old and going to an all-boys Catholic school. I knew that I was different.” That difference was that Luis liked boys instead of girls.

Gramajo grew up in Guatemala, a culturally conservative country. With Wunderkeks, the cookie company he created in Austin, Texas with his husband, Hans Schrei, the hope is that kids like he was long ago get to imagine another friendlier outcome.

Each Wunderkeks cookie and brownie comes individually wrapped in clear plastic decorated with colorful dancing characters celebrating queer identity. “What would have been for me to see another kid pulling their Wunderkeks cookie out of their lunchbox?” he said.

“Just by that action, knowing that I was going to be in a safe space with family and friends around…That, for me, would have been a game changer. Yeah, the cookies are delicious. But what they represent is way more important for us.”

The two, who moved to Austin, Texas from Guatemala in 2017, always loved cookies. “We both have a sweet tooth,” said Schrei, who is the main baker. He grew up baking with his mother and siblings, and as an adult decided to experiment one year by baking different cookies for each day of Advent. By the time he’d gotten to 18 different cookies, friends were recommending that he sell them. This home baking sensibility means that all of the ingredients in these sweets are wholesome, and the label’s list of ingredients include items found on most baker’s shelves.

For years, the two worked in consumer packaged goods, running brands in the healthcare, skincare and food industry across Central America and the Caribbean. So transitioning to cookies wasn’t so hard. Wunderkeks was born in Guatemala, but when the couple immigrated to the U.S., it bloomed. They started selling their cookies in farmers markets in Texas in 2019 and the cookies became popular quickly. Their background in branding served their company as they scaled up.

In May 2021, the couple decided to send out an email to their client base about raising funds for a foundation in celebration of Pride. In this note, they accidentally came out to their clientele. “We were never hiding that we were a gay couple, but that was the first time that we were specifically telling our customers that we were gay,” said Gramajo. It took less than an hour after that email went out for them to lose 10% of their subscribers.

For the first two weeks after that, the couple received messages filled with hate. The change in attitude reminded them of the culture of prejudice they’d experienced in Guatemala. That realization carried a new idea, to make the company about more than just the cookies. They began questioning how to do this, and their remaining clients gave them the answer.

For the last two weeks of June, the missives from clients changed as parents reached out to thank the couple. “We received communications from a lot of parents saying, ‘I think that my son might be queer. I’m not 100% sure, but we’re not ready to talk about it yet. So I just got your cookies to tell him, ‘When you are ready, I support you.’”said Gramajo.

The decision to bake this experience of safe space into their brand drew the attention of big names like Jeff Furman, a co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s, who joined them on their advisory board and encouraged them to look outwards and listen to the desires of their clients.

Now, each bright pink box of treats arrives with a copy of their mission statement which ends with, “Our hope is that you will share this box of cookies along with your willingness to listen. That this loud pink box will become, for you and yours, a symbol of fellowship and a marker of a safe space. We hope you will join us in building a joyful creative world.”