A Salt Lake City baker wants to start Utah’s first Korean ‘dessert cafe’ — and she’s crowdfunding to make it happen

Seoul is a long way from Utah, but a Salt Lake City baker wants to bring the kind of dessert cafe that’s so trendy in Korea to Utah for the first time.

Imagine a cafe where you can get housemade viral Korean desserts and pastries, like salt bread and Dubai chocolate mochi balls, as well as Korean coffee. A place with a large table displaying all of the gorgeous confections baked that morning, just begging you to take a photo and post it on Instagram. A community space where you can linger all day, soaking in the vibes.

Klara Han, co-owner of the baking operation Kyookie, wants to open her business’s first storefront, and she is asking the public to donate to a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter to help raise money the project.

Han started selling her from-scratch Korean pastries and desserts through Kyookie in 2023, first on Instagram, then at farmers markets and a couple of local cafes.

But she said customers have been asking her for months when she is going to open a brick-and-mortar location, and for Han, that time has come.

As of Monday afternoon, the Kickstarter had raised more than $19,000. On Tuesday, there will be 15 days left to go in the campaign.

‘A full nationality identity crisis’

Han was born in Eugene, Oregon, but moved with her family to Singapore when she was 2, and then to Korea when she was 12, she said.

Han always loved desserts, she said on her Kickstarter, and that year, she started baking and received her first oven for her birthday, a small blue countertop appliance that could bake about a half-dozen cookies.

As a teenager, Han would go cafe-hopping in Korea with her friends, sampling desserts. “I would just go home and try to bake the same thing I had at the cafe that day,” she said.

Korea “was the place that really shaped my eye for desserts,” Han said. Korean desserts are not overly sweet, she said, and “focus on balance and presentation.”

In 2022, Han decided to “take a huge leap,” she said, and move to Utah to attend the University of Utah.

She said wanted to “confront” her dual nationality as an American and a Korean. “I just really wanted to challenge myself and explore what it means to live here fully as an American,” she said.

But it was a struggle, Han said.

“I felt out of place,” she said. “I honestly felt like I didn’t belong here. I felt foreign.”

As homesickness and a “full nationality identity crisis” set in, Han said she turned to the one activity that she said always grounded her: baking.

She started making Korean desserts in her small dormitory kitchen, giving the treats away to roommates, friends and professors. But as she did so, people started telling her she should be selling her baked goods, not handing them out for free.

“I think that’s the moment I realized maybe this could be something bigger,” Han said.

She named her new venture Kyookie, a combination of her Korean first name, Kyouhee, and the word “cookie.”

‘Things really began to snowball’

In 2023, Han had her first bake sale through direct messages on Instagram, selling yakgwa cheesecake cookies and pistachio Basque cheesecake. The treats sold out in three hours.

The next week, Han sold out of her desserts and pastries in an hour. “I think things really began to snowball from that point,” she said.

Around that time, she met her boyfriend, Josh MacDonald, who is now her partner and a co-owner of Kyookie.

MacDonald has a business IT degree, and he built her a website for Kyookie, streamlining her sales, which continued to sell out, Han said.

In 2024, she decided to take Kyookie to farmers markets. Her first was Bohemian Bum Farmers Market at The Gateway, which she said was “a huge turning point for me.”

As soon as the market started, people started lining up at the Kyookie booth, which became the busiest stand at the event, Han said.

As she interacted with customers and told them about Korean desserts, “for the first time since moving to Utah, I didn’t feel foreign anymore,” Han said. “In that moment, I felt like I belonged.”

Kyookie became a monthly sight at farmers markets, and Han said she started to realize that her business was more than a side hustle.

In 2025, she partnered with two local cafes: Space Tea in Salt Lake City, and The Tea Barn, a Korean tea shop in Orem. The Space Tea partnership ended this month, but Kyookie desserts are still available at The Tea Barn, as well as Sunny Honey in the Marmalade District.

As Han met more customers and talked with them, she said she kept hearing the same thing, which was how “they want more diversity in the Utah dessert scene.”

That sentiment “reignited” a dream she’d had since she first started baking: to open her own cafe.

Kyookie the cafe

In Korea, there are bakery cafes, which just sell bread, and drink cafes, which just sell beverages, but Han imagines the physical location of Kyookie to be a dessert cafe, which sells both baked goods and coffee.

A trademark of Korean dessert cafes is the display table, where a huge variety of baked goods and puddings are set out, and Han wants to include this in her cafe.

“Seeing everything laid out is just so special to me,” she said.

But most of all, Korean dessert cafes are about warmth and coziness, Han said. They are beautifully decorated, a community space where customers can study, work, read, chat with friends, or just relax, she said.

Salt bread will be Kyookie’s star product — Kyookie’s logo is even a salt bread with a cute face and little hands and feet. Salt bread is a cross between a croissant and a dinner roll, made with so much butter that a hollow forms inside as the butter melts out the middle and through the dough, creating a “fried” buttery bottom layer. The interior is soft and the exterior is crunchy, and flakes of salt are sprinkled on top.

Han said people in Korea line up to get their hands on salt bread. Once the cafe opens, she plans to do drops of salt bread at a certain time so people can get the freshest possible. She said she’d like to make multiple varieties of salt bread, both sweet and savory, with different fillings placed in the middle.

She also plans to offer trendy yakgwa cheesecake cookies — which combine a traditional Korean honey cookie with a cinnamon cookie that has a vanilla cheesecake filling — matcha ganache cookies and much more. Her unique variations on Basque cheesecake will also be on the menu, flavored with matcha, black sesame and nutty injeolmi, which is a roasted soybean powder.

Han will also offer the viral Dubai chocolate mochi balls, which is a chocolate mochi filled with pistachio paste and crunchy kataifi.

As far as beverages, Han said she wants to offer Korean coffee drinks like Einspanners (an iced latte with thick cream), black sesame cream lattes, corn cream lattes, injeolmi cream lattes and more. She plans to feature Korean matcha drinks, featuring high-quality matcha grown on Jeju Island in Korea.

And in addition to sweets, Han also plans to sell Korean breakfast sandwiches, made with fluffy eggs and and fillings including bulgogi and ham & cheese.

Han said the Kyookie cafe, with its authentic, hand-baked treats, would be a first in Utah. While large Korean-French chains like Tous Le Jours and Paris Baguette offer Korean-style pastries, and have locations in Utah, Han said on her Kickstarter that their menus are “Americanized” and treat coffee and matcha as secondary. And the full dessert cafe experience would be new to the state, she said.

One day, Kyookie could become more than one cafe in Utah. Han said she hopes to franchise the business, creating a national Korean dessert cafe brand.

In the meantime, if the Kickstarter gets funded, Han and MacDonald would like to open the Kyookie storefront either downtown, near the University of Utah or in Sugar House.

The earliest they might be able to open is May, Han said, or sometime before summer.

Note to readers • For updates on Kyookie, follow the business on Instagram at @kyookie_.