Connie McDonald and Pam Weekes came on to From the Ground Up to discuss their 30-year-old brand—and the cookie that started it all.

BY DIANA RANSOM, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, INC. @DIANARANSOM

Want to hear the best cookie story? Yes? Me too. That’s why Christine Lagorio-Chafkin and I asked Levain’s co-founders Connie McDonald and Pam Weekes to be our guests on the latest episode of From the Ground Up.

This year also marks the company’s 30th anniversary, so now seemed like a great time to take stock in the New York institution.

Since starting their first bakery on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in 1995, the two have managed to grow their neighborhood shop into a revered brand with a national footprint. Getting there took drive and hard work—indeed, they tell me they never took vacations in the early days of the business. The other thing it took was one damn good cookie.

A fortuitous review in the New York Times in 1997 by Amanda Hesser, who would go on to found the culinary community and website, Food52, would change Levain’s trajectory forever. In the barely 230-word blub, Hesser called Levain’s chocolate-walnut variety “the largest, most divine chocolate chip cookies in Manhattan.”

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At a hefty six ounces, it’s little wonder why their cookies took over—and eventually phone calls would lead to long lines of dessert lovers jockeying for a shot at buying Levain cookies. While the Levain bakeries still make and sell many other baked goods, such as baguettes and coffee cake, McDonald tells me in our interview she didn’t mind that Levain’s cookies got all the attention: “We were just thankful there was a line for anything.” Startups being what they are, the early days were tough. But perseverance paid off.

In 1998, McDonald and Weekes launched a website—proto e-commerce!—to capitalize on their newfound success, and over the next decade, the mail-order business for Levain cookies grew by 1,600 percent. By the early 2000s, investors began knocking and in 2018, they signed with growth equity firm Stripes.

It hasn’t all been a box of cookies for the founders; there were difficult and lonely moments, even as their friendship never wavered, they say.

That was the part I was particularly fascinated by: How can two entrepreneurs, who are friends, stay that way through all of the drudgery involved in starting and growing a company?

They had some pretty poignant responses. Give a listen here and check out the full rough transcript below.

Ransom: Christine.

Lagorio-Chafkin: Diana. I’m just supposed to say Levain. Or should I…

Ransom: Le-vain? Or Levain?

Lagorio-Chafkin: Levain.

Ransom: Levain?

Lagorio-Chafkin: We say Levain. Right?

Ransom: So-

Lagorio-Chafkin: The French is Levain.

Ransom: Okay, so, if you’re pronouncing it correctly, you’re probably right, but I think that the way the people who own this company call it or pronounce it is Levain.

Lagorio-Chafkin: Okay. Do you know what a levain is? What the French word means?

Ransom: I think it has something to do with bread making.

Lagorio-Chafkin: If you have a sourdough starter, it’s the part of the sourdough starter that you supercharge with flour and get ready to bake with.

Ransom: This explains a lot because. when I was Googling this company, I kept pulling up all these bread baking recipes. I’m like, “This is not helpful.” But yeah, that’s good to-

Lagorio-Chafkin: … know.

Ransom: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It’s kind of a neat word. If you can pronounce it.
This is From the Ground Up. I’m Diana Ransom.

Lagorio-Chafkin: And I’m Christine Lagorio-Chafkin.
Today’s episode, the best cookie story.

Ransom: So Christine, I spoke with the co-founders of Levain Bakery, Pam Weekes and Connie McDonald. They are celebrating their 30th anniversary this year.

Lagorio-Chafkin: Wow! Wait, wait. Okay, so Levain is 30 years old. I feel like I’ve only heard about this bakery in the past three years.

Ransom: Yes. Me too. And it’s-

Lagorio-Chafkin: And I live in New York City. I have lived here for two decades.

Ransom: And here’s the thing, they became, quote, unquote, “The best cookie in New York City.” In 1997.

Lagorio-Chafkin: Wow.

Ransom: Amanda Hesser… You know Amanda Hesser-

Lagorio-Chafkin: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Ransom: … from Food52.

Lagorio-Chafkin: Of course. Of course.

Ransom: She was working at the New York Times and I think living on the Upper West Side, popped into this little storefront, [inaudible 00:01:43] cute little storefront. I don’t exactly know the name of the streets but whatever, she popped in, had this delightful cookie, wrote up a really super short little snippet about the best cookie in New York City-

Lagorio-Chafkin: Wow.

Ransom: … and that effectively put this company on the map. They just became known for their cookies.

Lagorio-Chafkin: Wow.

Ransom: And it was Amanda Hesser. That’s amazing.

Lagorio-Chafkin: And it was Amanda Hesser.

Ransom: Yeah. It’s just like the fortuitousness of this-

Lagorio-Chafkin: Yeah.

Ransom: … moment.
So anyway, 1997, flash forward to the fact that you and I both did not hear about the, quote, unquote, “Best cookie in New York City.” But all of a sudden they’re everywhere.

Lagorio-Chafkin: Not just everywhere, these cookies are huge.

Ransom: Yes.

Lagorio-Chafkin: Like-

Ransom: They’re monsters.

Lagorio-Chafkin: I feel like they are so notable because they are a giant chunk of cookie, and expensive. Right? I mean, it’s an-

Ransom: I think they’re-

Lagorio-Chafkin: … expensive cookie.

Ransom: … probably pretty normal price.

Lagorio-Chafkin: You think that’s normal-

Ransom: You-

Lagorio-Chafkin: … price?

Ransom: Well, you don’t like cookies that much, but cookies are about that-

Lagorio-Chafkin: So you’re saying that price.

Ransom: … price.

Lagorio-Chafkin: How would you know-

Ransom: You don’t have the frame of reference for buying-

Lagorio-Chafkin: It’s true.

Ransom: … cookies.

Lagorio-Chafkin: I wouldn’t know.

Ransom: They’re not that expensive, especially if you’re getting such a monster of a cookie. So, yeah, they’re really great but like, you hadn’t really heard of them until one of my students came in with a big batch of cookies and I was like, “What are these hulking beasts?” And then of course learned about them, but I think it’s a testament to the fact that they’ve had a really slow, organic growth story.

They started out with the one lone shop, and then they realized, “All my customers are flocking away from the city.” Or, “They’re leaving the city in the summertime. They’re all going out to Hamptons.” Or something like that, so they opened up one more shop five years down the road from their start date and they just have been growing really slowly since then.
And then they had an investor come in. It was a sort of strategic investment-

Lagorio-Chafkin: Sure.

Ransom: … and then they actually had money to invest in much more of a bigger footprint for them.

Lagorio-Chafkin: Yeah. So now how many shops do they have today?

Ransom: I think they have about 16.

Lagorio-Chafkin: Oh cool.

Ransom: And they’re growing.
Yeah, they just opened up a location in Hollywood and I think they have a new location in Venice. Both in California.

Lagorio-Chafkin: Ah, nice.

Ransom: Yeah, so they are covering the coasts at this point, but you know-

Lagorio-Chafkin: Yeah.

Ransom: … it seems like indicative of a growth story still.

Lagorio-Chafkin: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And what did you start by asking them about?

Ransom: So, Pam and Connie started out our conversation by describing the unusual way they met.

Connie McDonald: Pam and I met in 1987, swimming in the swimming pool in Midtown, and we became fast friends and started training and doing triathlons together.

Ransom: Right. Right. And what were you doing at the time?

Connie McDonald: You name it, I was doing it.

Pam Weekes: I was working in the fashion industry.

Ransom: Okay. With Norma Kamali, right?

Pam Weekes: Yes. Yeah, actually.

Ransom: Big brands like that?

Pam Weekes: Not when I first met Connie.
Well, between-

Connie McDonald: Yeah.

Pam Weekes: … before and after.

Ransom: Right, right, right.

Connie McDonald: That’s a safe answer.

Ransom: And Connie, you were an investment banker?

Connie McDonald: At that time, right before we started the bakery, I was doing retail sales, cold calling, in an investment bank.

Ransom: Oh, okay.

Connie McDonald: Yeah.

Ransom: Oh wow.

Connie McDonald: Yeah.

Ransom: This is like, boiler room kind of stuff.

Connie McDonald: Brutal.

Ransom: Wow.

Connie McDonald: Really brutal.

Ransom: Yeah. So you met in a swimming pool because you both are triathletes? You are triathletes. Or, you-

Connie McDonald: Yes.

Ransom: … were.

Pam Weekes: We weren’t when we met though, actually. I mean, I swam for most of my life and I love swimming, and I eventually got back into a pool in my mid 20s and that’s where I met Connie, and I think that she’s more of an all-around athlete but she always liked swimming.

Ransom: And you were both training at the time for-

Connie McDonald: We-

Ransom: … fitness.

Pam Weekes: Yeah.

Connie McDonald: Soon after we met there was a group of guys that we were swimming with in the same lane, and they had just started doing triathlons and they were like, “You guys really have to try. It’s so much fun.” And so we did.

Ransom: It just sounds so-

Connie McDonald: And then-

Ransom: … brutal.

Connie McDonald: I know, but it’s fun like-

Ransom: Really-

Pam Weekes: It’s kind of addicting.

Ransom: What made you want to think about starting a business?

Pam Weekes: So, we were training for Ironman and we were both working full-time jobs, so Saturdays we did long bike rides and that was usually 80 to 125 miles, something like that, and so it gives you a lot of time to think about your life and what you’re doing, and you’re not riding hard that whole time so you have time to chit-chat, and that’s when we discovered that we had both had this dream of having our own business.

Ransom: And did you know it would be a bakery?

Connie McDonald: No.

Pam Weekes: No.

Connie McDonald: No.

Pam Weekes: It wasn’t even together. We were thinking about ideas for each other and then it started…
Like, then we were thinking, “Oh, maybe we should try something together.” But we thought about the bike touring company, a women’s sports clothing store, because at that point, for female athletes there weren’t a lot of options.

Ransom: Yeah. And this was around 1987?

Pam Weekes: Yeah.

Ransom: Yeah.

Connie McDonald: Yeah.

Ransom: Okay.

Pam Weekes: Yeah.

Connie McDonald: Yeah.

Pam Weekes: Or like-

Connie McDonald: And in the meantime-

Pam Weekes: … 1990 maybe, by then.

Connie McDonald: Yeah.

Ransom: Yeah.

Connie McDonald: We had become roommates because-

Ransom: Okay.

Connie McDonald: … financially it’s like we were both…
I was living in Brooklyn and-

Pam Weekes: My rent was way too-

Connie McDonald: … Pam-

Pam Weekes: … much and I was like, “I had to change this.”

Connie McDonald: Yeah. So we became roommates and I was really so unhappy with what I was doing. And ironically, we were living in an apartment on 92nd between First and Second, and as you walk west to the subway on… Or, as I did on 92nd Street, there was a cooking school on the second floor and I had been doing some catering and was really loving that, and I would walk by and look up in the windows and thought, “Wow, that looks just so great.” And then make a long story short, I finally got fired from my last job.

Pam Weekes: No surprise.

Connie McDonald: Yeah, I deserved it. You know, I-

Ransom: Yeah.

Connie McDonald: … needed to be let go, and so I enrolled in that school-

Ransom: Okay.

Connie McDonald: … which was great, and it was there that I thought maybe I’d be a caterer, but it was there that I discovered bread baking.

Ransom: And you would bake bread at home, theoretically? Pam would enjoy it. Or what-

Pam Weekes: Well, you know what was really-

Ransom: Like, how did-

Pam Weekes: … fun about her being in school is that she would… I mean, she’d get home way before I would and she’d be in the kitchen practicing what she learned that day, so she would…
I mean, she went to culinary school so there was everything. I probably ate better that year than…

Connie McDonald: Yeah, I took it very seriously because I thought like, “This is my chance to do something that I felt really passionate about.” Which I hadn’t had that feeling, so it was really exciting.
The bread baking, every student who was in the school had to take turns baking bread for the school for the week. Most people found that they really didn’t like it and I just loved it, and so…

Pam Weekes: I grew up baking bread and baking, and my mother was an amazing cook and really ahead of herself in that we had no packaged foods and all that sort of thing so I think I took it a lot more for granted, whereas Connie did not, and she really appreciated-

Ransom: Yeah.

Pam Weekes: Yeah.

Ransom: It’s mind-opening, in a way.

Connie McDonald: Yeah.

Ransom: Yeah.

Connie McDonald: For sure. Yeah.

Ransom: But your mom is also the inspiration for the eventual cookie, right?

Pam Weekes: Well, for one of them. For the-

Ransom: One of them.

Pam Weekes: … dark chocolate peanut butter.

Ransom: Okay.

Pam Weekes: Yeah.

Ransom: Why six ounces? Why did cookies become your leading product?

Connie McDonald: That’s a two-fold answer.

Ransom: Yeah.

Pam Weekes: Yeah.

Connie McDonald: Right?

Pam Weekes: Yeah. So, six ounces, I think, for us, we started making them for ourselves, and I have to have dessert after every meal, and I love… Like, it has to be satisfying and it can’t just be junk dessert, so-

Ransom: Wait, is this just because you were a triathlete or because-

Pam Weekes: No.

Ransom: … you-

Pam Weekes: Just because I enjoy........

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