NYC’s famous Levain bakery will sell its cult chocolate chip cookies at DFW Central Market stores

New York City’s famous Levain bakery is well-known among cookie conconnoisseurs for its tall, broad, tender, chewy cookies, which weigh in at nearly half a pound each. Until now, though, you had to either stand in line at one of its seven bakery shops or order a batch online. Beginning this fall, though, Levain’s top selling cookies will be sold at Central Market grocery stores in DFW and throughout Texas. The cookies will be available in four flavors—chocolate chip walnut, two-chip chocolate chip, dark chocolate peanut butter, and oatmeal raisin. The cookies will be smaller than those sold at Levain shops (2 ounces rather than 6) and sold frozen in boxes of eight for about $8. Except for the size, the cookies are identical to those sold at the bakeries.

“Frozen provides the most consistent and salient experience,” Rachel Porges, Levain’s chief marketing officer told Bloomberg, which reported the news first . “We have yet to find a shelf-stable process that could deliver that for our cookie.” Porges said Levain plans to bake 20,000 cookies a day to supply initial demand and grow to represent 10% to 15% of Levain’s business in the next two years.

Why frozen instead of shelf-stable, pre-packaged cookies? Guy Chandonnet, the business development manager for frozen foods and dairy at Central Market, told Bloomberg that “refrigerated cookies are all the same junk.

“I’m pushing customers out of refrigerated and into frozen foods in general, because that’s where the quality is,” Chandonnet said.

Photos: Levain Bakery