“A little nervous and a lot excited” is how Patrick Bonin, franchise owner of Great American Cookie Company and Marble Slab Creamery, described the opening of the location in Bayou Landing at 10:30 a.m. today.

The business offers a dual mixture of cookies and ice cream, which Bonin said was a successful model that has worked across the country and is now making its way to New Iberia.

The business, which is following on the heels of the successful open of Chick-fil-A this past week, will employ about 25 people, and Bonin said those involved can’t wait to start serving the people of New Iberia.

What is Great American Cookie Company and Marble Slab Creamery?

Great American Cookies offers fantastic fresh baked cookies and brownies. We are really known as being the home of the original cookie cake. We also sell cookies by the slice. We have a wide variety of original chocolate chip cookies, sugar cookies, chocolate fudge, snickerdoodle and others.

Marble Slab Creamery offers ice cream made in the store. We literally have a walk in freezer full of butterfat cream and a batch freezer in the back where we mix ingredients. The ice cream is outstanding if you’ve never had it. Pick a flavor and we provide mix-ins. It has unlimited mix-ins with an ice cream flavor of your choice.

Both are owned by the same management group and paired together because of how great they are together.

How long was the process leading up to the opening and was it what you expected?

It’s been an adventure. It’s been a lot of fun. We had Brad Davis and Provost Minvielle who spearheaded the construction. They’ve done an amazing job on the store. They did an awesome job. Our goal all along was to open in December. We’re looking forward to people coming and experience it.

How has the community feedback been so far?

It’s been crazy, people have been stopping by and seeing if we we’re open. Facebook has been incredible, I posted last week that we’re going to be open Tuesday, and I think it had like 700-plus shares and 500 comments. It makes me a little bit nervous and a lot excited to take care of everybody.

Right now, we’re at about a couple of full-time employees and 25 total.

What’s the grand opening going to consist of?

It’s going to be a soft open tomorrow, we’re scheduling with the Chamber of Commerce with a ribbon cutting in January or February. Valentine’s day is a huge cookie date so we might do something then.