Young Couple Launch A ‘Sad Girls Cookie Club’, Offer Chunky Cookie With Crushed Potato Chips
Started by young couple
SGCC was started in July this year by young couple Zeth Lee and Carmen Choe, both 26. Carmen is a trained pastry chef who graduated from At-Sunrice Academy, while Zeth “works with start-ups and direct-to-consumers brands globally on their branding and marketing.”
The duo also founded another online biz called Bento Cake Burglar, which offers trendy customised Korean bento cakes. Carmen is now managing both businesses full-time. “We have received requests for our bento cakes for job promotions, graduations, anniversaries, and even breaking off from a toxic relationship,” shares Zeth.
While the couple reckon that cake is the “most celebratory dessert among all desserts”, they wanted to offer something that made for a more casual snack and started a cookie spin-off business. “It’s hard to go wrong with cookies, unless you’re allergic to them,” Zeth laughs.
“Eight out of 10 people asked us about our name”
Naturally, Zeth and Carmen’s customers are curious about the Sad Girls Cookie Club name. “Eight out of 10 people who came across our brand have asked us about our name. There’s no [significant] reason or mystery behind it. We wanted a distinguished name that was memorable and catchy,” says Zeth.
The flavours
Still, the club’s six cookie flavours seem to cater to broken-hearted people looking to gorge on something sinful. There’s Potato Chips & Chocolate ($5.50) with a sprinkling of crushed ridged potato chips on top, Peanut Butter & Jelly ($6), S’mores ($5.50), Lotus Biscoff ($5.50), Salted Caramel Hojicha ($4.90) and Chocolate Chip Walnut ($4.90).
A box with all six flavours go for $30, or you can mix and match your own combination of cookie flavours with a la carte pricing (minimum order of four pieces). On their first week of launching SGCC, Carmen and Zeth managed to sell “500 boxes” of their cookies, which Carmen bakes at home. Customers can place their orders before 5pm for next-day delivery. “On days when we aren’t catering to corporate orders, we will take in a maximum of 20 to 30 boxes of cookies a day,” Zeth says. “For the next collection, we will be featuring savoury flavours such as Black Truffle Potato, Nacho Cheese Corn and Garlic Butter & Herb.”
The unboxing experience
According to Zeth, Sad Girls Cookie Club revolves around “friendship and meaningful connections”. He elaborates: “This is our take on how a cookie should be, not only on how it tastes but also how it makes you feel. There's a lot of care that went into designing an engaging unboxing experience for our customers.”
Orders with six cookies and above are packed in a flat red box emblazoned with encouraging taglines like ‘eat me’ and ‘cookies never judge’. The baked goods are individually packaged in sealed sachets “for freshness”, and we lift up the last cookie to find a message at the bottom of the box that says: “Oops… This is the last cookie! Share one. It’s now or never.” Cute and interesting.
“At the end of the day, we are in the business of helping our customers celebrate and enjoy their best moments, and being obsessed about bringing the best unboxing or tasting experience really helps,” says Zeth.
The cookies
The good thing about individually packaged cookies is that you can keep the rest for another crisis day when you need comfort food. There are instructions on the cookies’ box to heat ’em up in the oven for optimum flavour and texture, which we do.
Some flavours look and taste yummier than others; we like the Chocolate Chip Walnut, Lotus Biscoff and S’mores. But the Potato Chips & Chocolate, which we found most intriguing, had bits of stale, soggy potato chips that a stint in the oven couldn’t save.
Still, the whole experience of eating these cookies is pretty fun, and there is obviously a lot of effort lavished by the young owners on their packaging. We foresee ourselves ordering this to cheer up a mopey friend, or send it to someone celebrating their birthday just to hear them utter: “What is this Sad Girls Cookie Club sia?”
Order at least a day in advance at www.sadgirlscookieclub.com.
Photos: Yip Jieying/ Sad Girls Cookie Club
