Rittenhouse Square Is a Cookie-Lovers Paradise

It's National Cookie Day, and we know just where to celebrate. If you’re in Rittenhouse Square and walk four minutes south, you can get a Hot Cocoa cookie almost as big as your face at Blueprint Cookies. Or, you could go four minutes east of the park, where you can get a S’mores cookie (for about the same price) at Chip City Cookies.

An eastbound stroll could also take you toward a Chocolate Chip Walnut cookie at Levain Bakery, and a short venture north of the park could bring you to a Peanut Butter Explosion cookie from the Taylor Chip shop.

Gourmet cookie shops have been proliferating throughout the country in recent years, and several brands have been descending upon Philly — specifically, Rittenhouse — over the past year. Each of the chains setting up shop in the area offers something a little different, and this section of Center City is chock full of options for massive, handheld confections that cost about $5 or $6.

What’s behind this trend? Hey Philly got in touch with the newcomers to ask what’s up.

How All These Cookie Brands Landed in Philly Around the Same Time

Each of Rittenhouse’s four new cookie shops has a bit of a different origin story.

First to open amongst this group of sweet shops was Blueprint Cookies, a franchised location of a Florida-based company opened by a group of Bucks County natives: Johnny Ciarlante, Christian Williams, and Joe Lees. While the trio collectively has experience in business, real estate, and construction, none of them had worked in food service previously.

But when Ciarlante and Williams met Blueprint’s CEO and tried the cookies during a visit to Florida in spring 2023, they knew they wanted to bring their gourmet cookies to the Philly market. Their plan came to fruition when the store opened late last year, and they hope to open up even more locations in the city or suburbs.

The second player in this cookie quartet, NYC-based Chip City Cookies, introduced itself to Philly in August — a few months after getting a multimillion-dollar investment from Enlightened Hospitality Investments to help expand its brick-and-mortar presence. The company, founded in 2017, has been expanding quickly, and its Philly location was “a couple years in the making,” said CEO and co-founder Peter Phillips.

“Philly was a natural choice,” he said. “It's a market we've been looking at for a long time. It’s actually a market that we struggled to find a space in.”

Philly is also home to the New York-based cookie shop Levain Bakery. Levain has been doing business in the Big Apple for three decades, but began opening storefronts in other cities in 2021, starting with a Washington, DC, location.

Levain declined Hey Philly’s request for an interview specifically about its Philly store. In a provided statement, co-founders Pam Weekes and Connie McDonald said they’re “beyond excited” to be “joining the acclaimed bakery and food community in Philadelphia.”

Also new to the area this year is Taylor Chip, a family-owned company based in Lancaster County that was founded six years ago and has a few outposts scattered across south central Pennsylvania. Philly has been a top market for their e-commerce business, said CEO Doug Taylor — and as the closest big city to their home base, opening up locations here felt like a natural fit.

“We figured if we can make it in Philly, we can make it anywhere,” Taylor said. “When it comes to our concept, we want to be national and then international. But we really want our roots to be Philly and Lancaster and that area.”

Why Rittenhouse?

Hey Philly posed this question to the cookie newcomers, and their answers essentially boiled down to this: The neighborhood is popping.

Phillips, of Chip City, called the neighborhood “a really strong market with a lot of great food brands,” which made it a “natural” place for his company to put down some roots in Philly.

Taylor, of Taylor Chip, agreed on the area’s allure. “If you're gonna be in Philly, if you're trying to make a splash, you go to Rittenhouse and you go to Frankford [Avenue],” he said.

Confidence in a Crowded Market

It’s undeniable that each of these shops are facing competition from each other — and that’s not even including the two Insomnia Cookies locations within a half-mile of the Square, including the Philly-based company’s flagship store.

But none of the cookie sellers Hey Philly interviewed seemed too worried about that.

“We have a million other cookie guys here in New York, and we're still able to continue to do well,” Phillips said. “We just look on what's in front of us, and I don't really worry too much about what's going on to the left and the right.”

Taylor compared it to the numerous sandwich and pizza shops that exist — just because Middle Child is super popular, for instance, doesn’t mean that other sandwich shops can’t also do good business, he said: “Everybody has their lane and their space.”

From the perspective of the Blueprint franchisees, the proliferation of gourmet cookies in the area actually makes them feel better about their choice to bring the brand to Philly.

“Chip City, Levain — they're much, I would say, bigger, more established companies than us at this time,” Ciarlante said. “So the fact that they are putting locations in Center City Philadelphia kind of shows that there's a demand for it … I think them moving [in] almost solidifies our decision to open up in Philly.”

Here To Stay?

Some folks in the comment sections of posts about these new shops have pointed out that it feels like cookie shops are popping up the way frozen yogurt shops did back in the early 2010s. And that kind of makes you wonder … will this sort of business — and these local shops — last?

Once again, the Rittenhouse Square cookie mongers didn’t seem too concerned about their products’ longevity.

“I think cookies are here to stay as a product line,” Phillips said. “That’s been exhibited by continuous growth. I think the power of social media sometimes can bring things to the forefront — but that doesn't mean that they weren't already doing well to begin with.”

Meet the Cookie Shops — and Find Out Why They Think They Stand Out

🍪 Blueprint Cookies | 268 S. 20th St.

🍪 Chip City Cookies | 204 S. 17th St.

🍪 Taylor Chip | 1807 Chestnut St.

🍪 Levain Bakery | 1518 Walnut St.