Scrubs and Sweets

Waking up at 2 a.m. and not able to go back to sleep, JOELLE INGRAM, owner of Southport Cookies, reaches for her phone. She has just one topic in mind: cookie recipes. By morning, she is adapting the recipes, transforming them into oversized vegan and gluten-free creations. Using quality ingredients like organic vanilla and sugar, chocolate chips, nuts, and cranberries, her cookies are some of the biggest cookies around town. 

“Our signature chocolate chip cookie is 170 grams,” Ingram says. “That’s more than one third of a pound.” Other customer favorites are her signature giant snickerdoodle and the S.S. Southport, a decadent cookie made with four kinds of chocolate chips, toasted pecans, homemade toffee, pretzels, and sea salt.  

Ingram always enjoyed baking. “You could often find me baking cookies late into the night,” she says, crediting her mother for showing her how to effortlessly bake and cook for her five siblings. Ingram’s family was a military family who moved frequently. “My mom made every house feel like a home,” she says.  

Once Ingram became a mom herself, life got busier and baking slowed down. And a career as a nurse took front and center. 

Ingram spent most of her nursing career as a pediatric nurse at Arkansas Children’s Hospital, Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., and Duke Children’s Health Center Bone Marrow Transplant Clinic. She also spent several years as a traveling nurse in Vermont, St. Thomas U.S. Virgin Islands, and Palm Beach, Fla.  

For the past nineteen years, she has been working for a company based in Newfoundland, Canada, initially in telehealth and progressing to management. 

Throughout her nursing career, Ingram lived by a motto: “I can’t change the outcome, but I can enhance the journey.” That philosophy is deeply personal. As a child, she was often hospitalized.  “The nurses I had made a huge, positive impact,” she says. “I wanted to be the one who made a difference.”  

Three summers ago, Ingram’s niece asked her to bake a wedding cake for her fully-vegan reception in Roanoke, Virginia. Not having ever made vegan dishes, Ingram spent months creating recipes and relying on neighbors for taste-testing. Ingram carefully transported her three-tier wedding cake and 600 cookies from Southport to Roanoke in the heat of summer. “The feedback from the wedding guests was amazing,” Ingram says. “And I got the bug to start baking again.” 

In February 2024, Ingram opened Southport Cookies on North Howe Street in Southport as a completely vegan bakery. As customers requested gluten-free options, she made the decision to become a fully gluten-free bakery to avoid any risk of cross contamination. 

Today, she balances operating the bakery while continuing to work full time as a nurse, combining two careers rooted in her passion for serving others. Ingram relies on a close-knit team of three other women to help keep everything in the bakery running smoothly – from making dough, baking, and packaging cookies to opening and closing the bakery, often with some singing and dancing mixed in. Additionally, Ingram’s sister HOLLEIGH DAVIS has been working in the bakery for the past two months after retiring from twenty-five years as a teacher in Georgia. 

“This has been quite a journey,” Ingram says. “We are so appreciative of our wonderful customers who helped make it possible.” While Southport Cookies has many loyal gluten-free customers, others come seeking dairy-free and vegan alternatives. “We take much pride in creating amazing cookies that don’t taste vegan or gluten-free,” says Ingram. “It’s heartwarming when someone comes in who is so excited to find a gluten-free vegan dessert.” 

A large number of Southport Cookie customers are neither vegan nor have gluten- and dairy-free diets. “They just love our cookies,” says Ingram. “They are delicious and made with love. And just perfect for everyone.” 

To view more of photographer Brenda Torrey’s work, go to brendatorreyphotography.com. 

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