That’s just the way the cookie crumbles.
People travel to NYC for many different reasons. Jordan White, 34, came all the way from Michigan with her husband — to spend their honeymoon eating cookies.
She got in line at Red Gate, the East Village hot spot bakery known for supposedly having the best chocolate chip cookie in NYC, hoping to catch a glimpse and grab a bite of one.
But when she arrived at 68 E. First St., a few hours before their 6 p.m. closing, there was a disheartening sign on the door saying they were sold out.
“There was a group of young people who walked up behind me and were audibly disappointed,” she recalled to The Post.
“After seeing Red Gate was closed, I ended up walking over to Supermoon Bakehouse and tried their chocolate chip and Maldon sea salt cookie,” White shared. “It was good, but I probably wouldn’t rate it among the highest on my list just based on personal preference.”
The 34-year-old knows a thing or two about cookies. She’s traveled to NYC several times before to try baked treats that she’s heard a ton about online — and she even keeps a ranking list on her phone.
“I’ve tried Levain, Culture Espresso, Seven Grams, Schmackary’s, Funny Face, Chip City and Breads Bakery.” Her favorite? Seven Grams because of their cookies’ “crispy edges with a soft center and good ratio of dough-to-chips.”
Although other dessert hysterias have come and gone, the good old-fashioned cookie has clearly taken over as the ultimate sweet treat of America.
White isn’t alone. These days, people like her and her husband are willing to travel from all over to say they’ve tried the latest talked-about cookie, while others are happy to drop $140 on a dozen luxury cookies from online cookie shops like Last Crumb.
“The world is tough right now. There’s something about a cookie that is very comforting,” food blogger Mia Wiston, 33, known on Instagram as @dishingdaily, admitted to The Post. “I think there’s something to be said for these simple pleasures that just brighten up somebody’s day.”
In fact, NYC’s cookie bakeries have quickly become the cupcake shops of the 2020s.
After that famous “Sex and the City” episode of Carrie Bradshaw eating a vanilla cupcake with pink frosting from Magnolia Bakery aired in the early aughts, tourists hogged the Bleecker Street sidewalk, begging their way into the beloved West Village bakery.
From there, popular spots like Crumbs, Sprinkles Cupcakes, Georgetown Cupcake and Baked by Melissa started popping up all over the country.
There was even a cupcake-baking competition show on the Food Network, called “Cupcake Wars,” in 2010.
These once megapopular cupcake shops are still operating, but at a smaller scale for some. Crumbs permanently closed all of its retail stores in 2016, now only offering an online ordering option. Georgetown Cupcake only has two stores, but Sprinkles Cupcakes and Baked by Melissa seem to be hanging in there, with various shops still operating around the country
Now, it seems that prime real estate around NYC is being snapped up by cookie bakeries like Levain Bakery, Milk Bar, Red Gate, Chip City, which has a whopping 18 locations in the city, and Crumbl with five local storefronts, causing people like White to line up around the block for them, urged on by influencers who make cookie review videos on social media.
“I do think some of these lines have gotten out of hand,” Wiston said.
“But if something’s good and you want to wait on line on the weekend and maybe talk to the people in front of you or behind you, why not? It’s kind of this communal city experience.”
Foodie TikTokker Sarah Jean (@sarahjeaneats) echoed this sentiment, telling The Post: “I just think it’s something that we can all connect to and relate to each other on.”
The cookie phenomenon has expanded even beyond long lines of hungry customers, too.
Chip City has partnered with JetBlue, enabling cookie lovers to earn extra rewards points while flying. The cookie chain also created a cookie inspired by a Bloom Nutrition energy drink.
Crumbl has collaborated with A-list celebrities like the Kardashians and the Jonas Brothers. Milk Bar has teamed up with Bath & Body Works to create an entire line of cookie-scented candles, body care and hand soaps.
Even the beloved Levain Bakery, which opened its Upper West Side doors 30 years ago and found great success with its massively thick cookies with a gooey center and a crisp exterior, has joined forces with candle company Snif to release a $46 limited-edition candle to celebrate its milestone anniversary.
Some skeptics might wonder if this cookie craze will eventually fade like its cupcake counterpart, but in this technology-obsessed digital age, social media might be the cookie’s saving grace.
One company in particular that skyrocketed to fame with the help of the internet is Crumbl, which was founded in Logan, Utah, in 2017, and now has over 1,100 stores throughout the country, with at least one in every state.
“It actually came organically at first,” Crumbl CEO and co-founder Jason McGowan told The Post. “A lot of the interactions and people being excited about our brand — it’s all from our customers.”
McGowan was aware of the buzz Crumbl was creating online, so his team cleverly thought of the idea to feature those same social media videos on large TVs in their stores.
“We kind of took that huge success and really highlighted that all throughout our system,” he said.
To differentiate itself from other cookie shop competitors, Crumbl offers different cookies weekly, featuring wild flavors like Dubai chocolate cheesecake and caramel apple cookies, “which creates this kind of experience across the world, where someone in Canada could be trying the same flavor as someone in New York,” McGowan added.
Chip City also opened in 2017 in Astoria, Queens, and now has 52 locations across nine states. Similar to Crumbl, the cookie hotspot has built quite a fanbase online with its wacky, stop-you-in-your-tracks flavors like Pop-Tarts, Cap’n Crunch, Teddy Grahams, Pringles and more.
“It’s a mountain of work because it’s not just the creative process of making a cookie, it goes into the marketing side of things … and finding something everybody’s happy with,” Chip City CEO and co-founder Peter Phillips told The Post.
Crumbl and Chip City’s boost from social media is now lighting a fire under bakeries that were established way before social media was a thing.
When it opened in the East Village in 2008, Milk Bar wowed New Yorkers with its Cereal Milk Soft Serve and Compost Cookies.
The award-winning bakery has since expanded to Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Las Vegas and Chicago. But now, to keep up with the cookie phenomenon and the fierce competition from newcomers, Milk Bar has been forced to expand its cookie menu by offering fun flavors like Chocolate Chip ‘N Chunk, Triple PB and Oatmeal Cream.
Not that every crumb needs to undergo a reinvention.
As Wiston explained, while the cookie craze might see different iterations in years to come, a classic chocolate chip cookie has more longevity because it “hits” for most people.
“I don’t know if it will always be a craze, but I think that people will always seek out chocolate chip cookies,” she said. “I don’t think that they’re going to become extinct.”
And while Milk Bar and Levain might be considered ancient compared to these buzzy cookie bakeries, Levain owners Connie McDonald and Pamela Weekes are grateful to still be a part of the cookie love.
“Every once in a while, when we do stop to think about it, it’s kind of amazing because it’s the last thing in the world I ever would have thought would have happened,” McDonald told The Post.
