Levain Bakery Will Bring Its Cult Cookies to Supermarkets This Fall

(Bloomberg) -- Before the Covid -19 pandemic made waiting outside stores ubiquitous, the longest, most tenacious line in New York was the one that led into the Upper West Side's Levain Bakery. Whether in winter subzero weather or scorching hot temperatures in the summer, the wait could take a half-hour for one of the lauded chocolate chip cookies the size—and heft—of a hockey puck.

In September, fans of the gargantuan cookies will be able to line up at select supermarkets, instead of a New York storefront.

Levain will roll out its first consumer packaged goods at the Texas-based Central Market. The cookies will be available in four flavors—chocolate chip walnut, two-chip chocolate chip, dark chocolate peanut butter, and oatmeal raisin. The price for a box of eight 2-oz. cookies will be around $8. The company is also negotiating with additional supermarkets for national distribution.

The bakery was started in 1995 by Connie McDonald and Pam Weekes on a residential Upper West Side street. It quickly became an enviable cult favorite, thanks to its massive size, doughy center, and crisp edges.

After the growth equity group Stripes bought majority ownership in 2018 for an undisclosed amount, the company began expanding briskly. Two of its seven locations opened in 2020, and its first bakery outside New York is scheduled to debut in Washington in September.

What differentiates Levain from other bakery brands that have entered the packaged-goods business is that theirs will be frozen, pre-baked cookies, as opposed to a shelf-stable option. (Earlier this year, Milk Bar began offering bestsellers such as its compost cookies at Whole Foods in the packaged cookie aisle.)

“Frozen provides the most consistent and salient experience,” says Rachel Porges, the company's chief marketing officer. “We have yet to find a shelf-stable process that could deliver that for our cookie.” Shelf-stable cookies are typically chewy or crisp, but not both.

For the product, Porges leveraged past experience at Unilever plc, where she brought the frozen home menu of P.F. Chang's China Bistro to market in 2010; the line produced about $111 million in sales in its first year.

Levain cookies won't create that much business, at least at first. The company is producing only 20,000-plus cookies a day to start. Porges expects the frozen versions to represent from 10% to 15% of Levain's business in the next two years, “with lots of runway to grow.” 

Andy Taylor, Levain's chief executive officer, says the plan is to keep expanding in physical stores as well. “Looking one to two years ahead, we will be national,” he says. “There's international interest for franchising, and it's not something we'd rule out.” Chris Carey, partner at Stripes says more locations in the greater New York area are under consideration, and that “markets like Boston, Chicago, and Los Angeles are interesting for us.” 
 

The frozen cookie category is relatively uncrowded. “The refrigerated cookies are all the same junk,” says Guy Chandonnet, business development manager for frozen foods and dairy at Central Market. “I'm pushing customers out of refrigerated and into frozen foods in general, because that's where the quality is.”

One concession Levain has made for its packaged product, though, is size. Notwithstanding renown for decadent cookies that contain six ounces of batter, its packaged ones are only one-third as big. This is a more reasonable product that still clocks in at around 260 calories, but it's one that takes away from the extravagance of the original.

“The cookies at the bakery are designed for sharing. These are meant for one person,” says Porges. “We didn't see that people needed a six-ounce cookie at home.”

And for those of us who might? Porges says larger sizes of the cookies could be coming to frozen aisle in the future.

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