Realising that fellow students got the late-night munchies for more than just pizza, Seth Berkowitz started baking cookies and delivering them by bike on U Penn's campus, oven to door in two minutes. Not surprisingly, warm, fresh cookies took off, and Insomnia Cookies was born.
Seth started off with six varieties of cookies and six varieties of brownies, preparing the batter ahead of time, and popping cookies in the oven as orders came in. Three years later, Insomnia Cookies has expanded to nine other campuses (Drexel, Syracuse, Illinois, Maryland, Ithaca, Cornell, Binghamton, Princeton and NYU), where cookies, milk and other beverages are delivered by car from 8:00 PM to 2:30 AM, seven nights a week.
Great concept, both for building a niche business or the next Mrs Fields. (See After-9 for more late-night delivery.) Mmmm... Springwise wants a cookie!
Too bad Insomnia Cookies doesn't live up to its promise. As one of the former $9.00 an hour phone operators, who worked in the former "Cookie Central", a dingy warehouse in a bad area of Jersey City, I can attest to absentee owners, over-rapid expansion, staffing churn, and five bounced paychecks (four of which remain unpaid). It will be interesting to see whether this business will get its act together for the fall semester.
Karen McBain | June 25, 2006 11:35 PM