When it comes to cookies, Nicole Balsamo believes more is more. Cosmic brownie cookies. Cookie butter-stuffed churro cookies. Blueberry pancake cookies. Dark chocolate peanut butter fluff cookies.

These are just a few of the maximalist flavors you’ll find at No Crumbs Cookies, a bakery Balsamo runs out of her one-bedroom Russian Hill apartment on top of her full-time tech job. Just six months after launching the business, her boxes are so popular that they sell out the second they drop.

“I did not expect this,” Balsamo, who works as head of marketing at an artificial intelligence startup by day, told SFGATE. “They kind of got away from me. The second that they go for sale, everything is added to someone’s cart.”

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On Saturday morning, a line was already forming outside Balsamo’s apartment before she’d even set up her folding table on the sidewalk. All of the customers had preordered their boxes the week before on Hotplate (the Ticketmaster of hyped food drops). With only 60 pastel pink boxes up for grabs, competition was fierce.

No Crumbs Cookies’ home kitchen in San Francisco, on Nov. 15, 2025.

Preordered No Crumbs Cookies boxes lined up in the home of Nicole Balsamo and her husband Jake Stone, in San Francisco, on Nov. 15, 2025.

Freshly baked No Crumbs Cookies on Saturday morning in San Francisco, on Nov. 15, 2025.

“This was my third or fourth attempt,” said Kylee, a first-time customer who shared only a first name. “I saw them on Instagram a couple times, and for some reason, I thought it would be easier than it was.”

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