A New York City-based bakery is expanding to Philadelphia, bringing its enormous – and pricey – sweet treats to Rittenhouse.
Levain Bakery will open a store at 1518 Walnut St. this fall, the company announced Wednesday on social media. This will be the popular bakery’s first location in Pennsylvania.
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With a name meaning “leavened bread” in French, Levain was founded in 1995 as a small bread shop by friends and bakers Pam Weekes and Connie McDonald, who began baking chocolate chip walnut cookies to keep up their energy levels as they trained for triathlons.
Today, Levain is best known for its cookies – each handmade, weighing in at more than a third of a pound and available for purchase in stores or online. Along with the OG chocolate chip walnut — which is sure to be beloved on Walnut Street — Levain also bakes other “crispy and chewy and soft and melty” cookies, like caramel coconut chocolate chip, dark chocolate peanut butter chip, oatmeal raisin, and a vegan and gluten-free chocolate chip walnut. In addition to cookies, the store sells pastries, breads, tea and coffee.
At the Levain’s original location on West 74th Street in New York City, most varieties cost $5.77 for one cookie. The price is about the same at each New York location, and at the bakery’s shops in Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles, a single cookie cost about 50 cents less.
With 558,000 followers on Instagram, Levain has become — as the bakery says itself on its website — a “cult favorite.” (One of our editors even saw a person hugging the “coming soon” sign and posing for a photo outside the new Philly location this week).
Levain takes over the storefront that had been occupied by the men’s clothing store My.Suit since 2014 until it closed during the pandemic.
The bakery will add to the Philadelphia robust cookie scene, which includes places like Insomnia Cookies, Famous 4th Street Cookie Co. and Crumbl Cookies. More details on Levain’s first Philly shop will be shared in the coming weeks, according to the company.