Time for another pet peeve: the feedback loop in the last mile of the cookie supply chain is fundamentally broken. As a VC, I attend numerous conferences, catered board meetings, company gatherings and such. I don’t understand why the food service industry has never figured out that people enjoy chocolate chip cookies a hell of a lot more than oatmeal raisin cookies, or any other cookie for that matter. Time after time, at these events, someone chooses to put out equal amounts of several varieties of cookies. Invariably, the chocolate chip cookies run out early, while every other species remains unfinished and presumably goes into the dumpster at the end of the day, leaving glaring evidence of the superiority of the chocolate chip cookie (see photo above). So why has the cookie serving ratio never been adjusted? As a chocolate chip cookie fanatic (and as someone who believes the world would be much better off if I ran it), this drives me crazy.
The humble chocolate cookie may be the perfect baked good, and I consider myself something of an expert. Four of the best examples of chocolate chip cookies I’ve tasted can be had at Robert’s Market in Woodside (made by Selma’s), The Peninsula Creamery in Palo Alto, Specialty’s Bakery and The Grove Fillmore in San Francisco.
But my wife Katherine made the best chocolate chip cookies I’ve ever tasted one year for a Fourth of July party we hosted at our place up in San Francisco, using her top-secret modification of a Cook’s Illustrated recipe and several types of chocolate, including our local favorite Scharffen Berger. One of our guests even covertly stuffed his pockets with several extra cookies for the road, though he was busted by his wife on their way out the door when she put her hands in his jacket pocket. Katherine took the theft as high praise.