Cindy Kienzle is the Founder of Hungry Monkey Baking, LLC. It took Cindy 25 years to start her baking company. Almost everything great in her life came late – she got married at 47, had her daughter, Lily (Hungry Monkey’s namesake), at 48, and started Hungry Monkey just days before her 51st birthday, 14 years ago. 

Cindy always wanted to open a bakery, but she had a career heading up the Chicago Transit Authority’s Marketing and Customer Communication Department for a decade. Fate intervened when she lost her job and needed to find a new position with more flexible hours to spend more time with her new baby girl who showed signs of delays. When a Lake Forest Mom asked her to bake her signature chocolate chip banana bread for a local charity for kids with special needs; she sold out two days in a row. Hungry Monkey was born a month later in a local farmers market.  She began on Lily’s 2nd birthday, just days before her 51st birthday. Other Lake Forest Moms helped out, too, one offering up her commercial kitchen; and another inviting her to be featured in a local magazine, which led to her being in a local grocery chain three months after starting. Another local mom introduced her to a platform where Howie Mandel discovered Cindy & Lily doing a live baking show. Howie Mandel featured Hungry Monkey in a one-hour show at the start of the pandemic, a game-changer.

Hungry Monkey focuses on a small product line of natural, handmade, small-batch sweets. Their current line-up includes their Signature and #1 seller, Chocolate Chip Banana Bread, an Original Banana Bread, a Cinnamon Apple Streusel Cake, a Lemon Tea Cake with Lemon Buttermilk Icing, seasonal Pumpkin Bread – and their wildly popular Triple Chocolate Brownies, Howie Mandel’s favorite! 

As Cindy looks to the future, she dreams of bringing Hungry Monkey national. They are on their way, with a new west-coast 50-store chain launching this Fall, more than 50 Jewel Food Stores throughout Illinois, and seven Sunset Foods & The Grand Food Center stores in Chicagoland. 

Cindy was born in Evanston, Illinois -- and for the past 18 years, she has resided in Lake Forest, IL with her husband Tom, and 16-year-old daughter, Lily. And while there have been many bumps and detours along Hungry Monkey’s sweet road, Lily continues to inspire Cindy. Lily has defied the early odds and is a happy teen, a wiz in Math and Science, an honors choir student where she shines singing opera and acapella; she has also been in more than a dozen plays and musicals.