CUSTOM COOKIES, LOCAL CELEBRATIONS AND A MOVIE SET
Lisa’s Cookie Jar has turned shortbread into birthday favors, team jerseys and a small piece of Turlock’s movie history. In one busy year, its cookies helped celebrate Colin Kaepernick’s first Super Bowl appearance, and its Broadway shop became a filming location for Lacey Chabert. The everyday business is more personal: cookies made for somebody’s particular occasion.
Updated 2026.
Find the shop on Broadway
Lisa’s Cookie Jar is at 115 S. Broadway, just south of West Main Street. Its business listing describes a bakery specializing in custom decorated shortbread, with cookies for retail, events and catering.
Call 209-656-9745 to discuss an order or that day’s opening hours. The shop’s listed Instagram account, @lisascookiejarturlock, is another place to look for its work. For a custom order, the useful starting details are the date, number of cookies and the design or occasion you have in mind.
A business built around decorated shortbread
Owner Lisa Fernandes spent two years baking and decorating cookies for weddings, birthdays and showers before opening a retail shop in May 2012. The Journal’s June 2012 business profile describes that move from special-event orders to a storefront where passersby could buy something for themselves.
Vanilla shortbread was the signature, but the early selection also included chocolate chip cookies and Magic Bars. Decorations could be as specific as San Francisco Giants jerseys or as seasonal as watermelons and American flags. Fernandes welcomed customers with recipes they wanted to try—a revealing detail about a shop that grew from individual requests.
The 2013 football rush—and an improvised cookie cutter
Before the February 2013 Super Bowl, Turlock was cheering for former Pitman High quarterback Colin Kaepernick. KQED’s report from town found Lisa’s Cookie Jar struggling to keep up with demand for jersey-shaped cookies.
Fernandes could not find the right jersey cutter. She used one shaped like a baby’s onesie and trimmed off the bottom to make a football shirt. The recipe described in that report was shortbread covered in fondant and royal icing. It was a small piece of improvisation behind a very visible hometown celebration.
The Journal’s account of the same week adds the scale: Lisa’s had made 400 cookies for Camp Taylor, Kaepernick’s chosen charity, and five dozen for a Dos Palos family traveling to New Orleans for the game. Football helmets, jerseys and red-and-gold “Kaeperdoodle” cookies were part of that week’s production.
Other Turlock businesses joined in. KQED also reported a Kaepernick hot-dog special at Main Street Footers. The temporary menus are history now, but they show how a hometown sporting moment spread across otherwise ordinary lunch counters and bakery cases.
When the cookie shop became a film location
Later that year, the shop had a different visitor. The Journal reported on December 4, 2013 that Lacey Chabert spent much of the day filming at Lisa’s Cookie Jar for Corbin Bernsen’s romantic comedy, Christian Mingle. A photograph accompanying the story shows actors waiting outside the Broadway storefront.
Bernsen had toured Turlock with the local film commission and chose it to stand in for the arts-oriented neighborhood where the lead character lived. Lisa’s was a real working business used as a location, rather than a shop built for the production. The report identified Sushi Cuisine as the next filming stop.
Our Christian Mingle feature follows the film’s wider connection to town. For a walk beyond the cookie shop, the Main Street guide puts nearby food, storefronts and local history together. Browse Shopping & Dining for more of Turlock’s independent businesses.
