A visit to the new Cookies & Dreams shop in downtown Naperville is guaranteed to tantalize all the senses when it opens next month, according to a company spokeswoman.

Located at 22 E. Chicago Ave in the River District dining and shopping center, it will become the fifth store in the Bettendorf, Iowa-cookie chain.

The only other store in Illinois is in Oak Lawn, which opened last year.

Naperville’s Feb. 11 opening date is designed to take advantage of the Valentine’s Day holiday, said Lisa Hobart, director of operations for the cookie company.

Cookies & Dreams may start initially as a pop-up shop until all the necessary training and permits are attained to bake cookies on premises, she said.

Cookies & Dreams founder Stephanie Sellers’s goal is to provide more than a quality cookie for people to buy, Hobart said.

“We really want it to be an experience,” she said.

That starts with welcoming customers with a friendly greeting, a cookie to sample and the aroma of freshly baked cookies, she said.

“They want to smell that when they walk in the door,” Hobart said.

Then the staff speaks with guests to narrow down what types of cookies are their favorites, she said.

Each month the Naperville shop will offer 12 different cookie varieties made from scratch on-site. They range in size from 5 ounces to 7 ounces, depending on the flavor, she said.

Nine of the options are offered year round and three are swapped out monthly.

The bestseller and the company’s signature cookie is the OG Chocolate Chip, with semisweet chips topped with a sprinkle of sea salt, Hobart said.

The snickerdoodle also is very popular, she said, and the peanut butter cookie is made with 12 points of peanut butter per batch.

In February, the Naperville store will feature three decadent flavors in time for Valentine’s Day: a dark chocolate, a Nutella-stuffed red velvet, and the Poppin’ Champagne.

Cookies are available individually or can be packaged as gifts for special events, holidays or corporate functions.

For festive occasions, Cookies & Dreams offers 10-inch round cookie cakes, which are more like a deep-dish cookie pie. Among the options is the OG Chocolate Chip filled with Nutella.

The Naperville store also will sell cereal-based snack mixes, and expects to add flavored milk to accompany the cookies in the next few months, Hobart said.

Developing partnerships with the community is an integral part of company’s philosophy, according to Hobart.

For example, they collaborated with Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Mississippi Valley to create Mint to Dream Big, a soft mint cookie loaded with white and semisweet chocolate chips and topped with chocolate ganache and Andes mint chips, she said.

A portion of the sales went to the nonprofit group.

Cookies & Dreams also partnered with Argrow’s House, an Iowa group that assists women heal from domestic violence and abuse by providing employment.

Hobart said the workers craft cookie-scented bath and body products.

Those products are sold at Cookies & Dreams stores as well as cookie-scented candles produced by another Iowa-based women-owned business.

The Naperville shop still needs to hire more workers and expects to employ between 25 to 30 people, Hobart said.

As a woman entrepreneur, Sellers wants to develop women and “teach them the life skills to dictate their success,” she said.

The company tries to be flexible and has hired mothers who just want to get out of the house for a few hours a week.

“It’s a fun culture,” Hobart said. “Cookies are fun, and you’re baking cookies. What could be more fun?”

The plan is to increase the number of locations over the next several years but still maintain the same quality and consistency at all locations, she said. One thing they’re exploring is how to prepare the batter at its Iowa plant so individual stores do just the baking, she said.

That also opens the possibility of Cookies & Dreams offering cookie dough for sale as school fundraisers, Hobart said.

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