A few months ago, I noticed a “coming soon” sign for No Baked Cookie Dough on the outside of a former restaurant in Nashville. “A cookie dough store? Is this a thing?” I wondered. A few weeks ago when the shop opened and a long line of customers were waiting to get inside, I was convinced, “this is definitely a thing.”
(Update: See footnote.)
Uncooked (or “edible”) cookie dough shops are appearing across the country from New York to L.A. (A list of examples is below.) Some of the shops offer dough for cooking (described as “raw”) but the concept of these shops is the guilty pleasure kind of dough eating you enjoyed when your mom let you lick the cookie dough bowl. Side note: to meet FDA guidelines, the cookie dough treats are prepared without eggs to prevent salmonella risk and some of the dough uses special types of flour for those who are on gluten-free diets.
If you’re still having trouble picturing what the product is, think of a cup of “cookie dough ice cream” at a gourmet ice cream shop, but without the ice cream. In fact, that’s exactly what inspired the founder of Unbaked to start her business.
Unbaked | Owner Olivia Hops was standing in line one day at Coldstone Creamery and taking note of an ice cream flavor called “cookie dough.” “I thought, ‘what about forgetting ice cream and going straight cookie dough? While primarily an ecommerce business, there is an Unbaked Dessert Shop in Woodland Hills, California.
Via : Unbaked
No Baked Cookie Dough | Originally from Louisville, Megan Beaven moved to Nashville to study at Belmont University’s noted entrepreneurship and music business programs. Merging her love of cookie dough and her entrepreneurial spirit, Megan opened a No Baked online store in April 2017 and quickly added a pop-up store where she sold cookie dough treats at events around the city. By the end of the year, a permanent store opened and instant lines appeared.
Dō | The New York Times describes Dō’s “brick-thick cookie dough” (as being something) just like grandma and your mother used to make. Founder Kristen Tomlan says her cookie dough epiphany occurred during a girls’ weekend in Philadelphia when the group stopped by a cookie shop for a sweet-tooth fix. “My inner child craved the unbaked dough. We bought a tub of frozen cookie dough — intended for baking — and we passed around the tub, loving every bite and laughing about the lack of cookie dough designed solely for eating in its pure form. From there, DŌ was born.
Via: Cookie Dough Café
Cookie Dough Café | In addition to a shop in Portland, Ore., they sell cookie dough through 9,500 food and grocery stores nationwide, including Fresh Market, Kroger, Walmart, and Albertsons.
Update, 11.28.2017 | Tasting uncooked foods made with flour can make you dangerously ill, according to a study published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine. The report, which recounts the detective work that led to a recall of more than 10 million pounds of flour in the summer of 2016, confirms that a type of E. coli bacteria previously discovered lurking in wet environments like hamburger meat and leafy vegetables can also thrive in arid hosts.