Warm, fresh-baked drive-thru cookies in Fresno? It opens Friday, here are the details
You can get a lot of things at drive-thrus in Fresno, but fresh-baked, still warm from the oven cookies?
Yup.
Starting Friday, you can get them at Fresno-based Crave Cookie’s new drive-thru location, which also has a storefront you can walk into.
Its first location opens at 1 p.m. Friday, April 16. It’s in the Marketplace at El Paseo, the shopping center with Target near Highway 99 and Herndon Avenue. Crave Cookie is in an outbuilding near Riverside Drive a few doors down from Robertito’s.
Crave Cookie has been delivering its warm cookies to doorsteps in the Fresno-Clovis area since 2019.
The Fresno bakery is its first that’s open to the public, but another is in the works for Clovis. That one is expected to open in the coming weeks or months at Sunnyside and Tollhouse avenues.
The cookies
These are no ordinary cookies. They’re huge. They’re 4.5 inches wide and weigh about 6 ounces – “the same size as my steak,” jokes owner and founder Shandi Scrivner.
They’re also unusually tall. How they get so tall is a secret, she said.
All are served warm, except for the sugar cookies. Those are served cool because they are gooey and have frosting. They’re only sold at the store because they don’t do well with delivery in the Valley’s heat.
The cookies sell for $4 apiece or $14 for a box of four.
Any cookies that are no longer warm (more than about two hours old) will be sold at a discount for $2.50 each.
The menu includes three daily cookie options: the original chocolate chip, sugar cookies with rainbow sprinkles, and churro cookies made with white chocolate and topped with cinnamon sugar.
Plus, there’s always a rotating flavor. That could be circus party cookies, with animal crackers inside and atop the cookies. Or Nutella-stuffed cookies, the cookies and cream flavor, or monster cookies made with oatmeal, pretzels and M&Ms.
The limited menu is deliberate.
“We want to be able to bake as many cookies as we possibly can,” Scrivner explains, though some extras like ice cream may be in the works in the future.
The store also has a neon “Size does matter” sign inside the store, perfect for taking selfies.
The business also sells drinks, including Rosa Brothers milk from Hanford, coffee drinks from Kuppa Joy in Fresno and energy drinks.
And they’ll have the “good ice,” the pebble-shaped ice, Scrivner noted.
“I posted that on Instagram. I’ve never gotten so many comments about ice,” she said.
Crave Cookie will continue to deliver even once both shops are open.
Explosive growth
When Scrivner, a photographer and a mom of four boys who also did hair, started Crave Cookie in 2019 she wasn’t expecting it to take off so fast.
In addition to her cookies, also key to its success was the ordering software her brother developed that allowed the company to deliver cookies while still warm using insulated bags.
Now, two years later, the Crave Cookie is selling 500 boxes a day. It has 42 employees and is hiring more.
After the Clovis location gets open, the company plans to use the warehouse where it bakes cookies for delivery now to start shipping nationwide.
This story was originally published April 15, 2021 at 4:25 PM.
