August 23, 2024
Provided Image/Taylor Chip
Husband and wife Doug and Sarah Taylor will bring their cookie company Taylor Chip to Philadelphia next month with stores in Fishtown and Rittenhouse.
Update 11/13/24: Taylor Chip's location at 1807 Chestnut S will open Saturday, Nov. 16.
Lancaster cookie company Taylor Chip will make its Philadelphia debut next month with two new stores.
A Rittenhouse location will open Saturday, Sept. 14 at 1807 Chestnut St., and a Fishtown store at 1828 Frankford Ave. will open a week later. Both will feature two dozen flavors of cookies and coffee. Plus, the Philly locations will be the first Taylor Chip stores to offer ice cream.
Taylor Chip was founded in Lancaster and has five locations in Manheim, Hersey, Intercourse, Harrisburg and York. It also ships its sweets nationwide. Husband and wife Sara and Doug Taylor started off baking together for fun, attempting to remake a favorite Crisco-based cookie recipe into one that instead used butter. Eventually, they decided to turn it into a business and launched Taylor Chip at their wedding in 2018.
The cookies are thick and moist, the Taylors said, with a slightly crunchy exterior.
"We wanted a thick, dense, gooey, huge cookie," Sara said.
Taylor Chip's s'mores cookie.
While working at their other stores, the Taylors said they often would hear of customers coming from Philadelphia to get their cookies, so they've been hoping to launch in this market for years. They'd originally planned to spread out the two openings by at least eight months, but permitting and construction put them close together, and they decided to embrace it.
"It's nerve-wracking because there's such a huge investment going into this," Doug said. "But we think Philly people will show up, and we're really excited to build a footprint around here and build some roots."
The Rittenhouse store will be mostly a to-go space, whereas the Fishtown shop will feature about a dozen seats. Both stores will offer Third Gen Coffee and refreshers, and all flavor syrups are made in-house. Each location will have 20 regular cookie flavors, including vegan and gluten-friendly options, and up to five seasonal varieties, including pumpkin spice in the fall.
Both stores will debut Taylor Chip's ice cream, starting with 12 varieties including Chunky PB&J, Sweet Potato Casserole and Tartberry Crumble Crisp alongside classics like butter pecan and black raspberry. The Taylors are in the process of building a 20,000-square-foot creamery to expand their ice cream offerings — they eventually hope to have 24 flavors available at each location — but for now they are working with a dairy in New Jersey.
The Taylors are also hoping to engage the community with a fundraiser. During the first week of the Rittenhouse opening, one cookie will be donated to patients at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia for each cookie sold.
Should these openings be successful, they hope this will be the first step in a more nationwide presence.
"Philly has just always been super supportive of what we've been doing in general and also, Philly is very protective of Philly," Doug said. "So we're like, if we can make it here, we can make it anywhere."
