NEXT DOR
VOICE OF THE NEW JEWISH GENERATION
Lauren Roumayah
Inspired by Generations For the 29-year-old business owner, who owns and operates Detroit Cookie Co. alongside her husband and business partner, Tony Sevy, baking cookies is second nature. Roumayah’s first memory of baking is at the young age of 4, when she’d bake cookies with her mother, Paula. “My mom was the cookie baker in the family,” she recalls. “It went back generations. Around the holidays, we’d make sugar cookies.”
and even friends of her friends, would beg her to make cookies. “I would bake copious amounts of sweets,” she remembers. While dating, Roumayah’s now-husband, Tony, always encouraged her to continue baking. Although she studied fashion merchandising at Wayne State University and went on to work in the field, Roumayah knew her true passion was with making cookies. “It was not making me happy at all,” she recalls of her original career path. One day, her husband asked her, “What do you want to do, in a perfect world?” Roumayah’s response was instant: “I just want to make cookies,” she said. Tony was all for the idea. In 2014, the pair began planning the idea for Detroit Cookie Co. By 2015, it was officially established. At the time, Roumayah continued to work her 9-5 job as the business plan came together. “We were making cookies, but now we had to do it legally because you can’t just make cookies in your house,” she says.
A RETURN TO COOKIES Today, those recipes and memories inspire Detroit Cookie Co. As she grew up, Roumayah continued to bake. Her friends,
FINDING A HOME Therefore, Roumayah began to seek out a permanent location for Detroit Cookie Co. First, she turned to the Culinary Studio,
“My goal was to be a neighborhood joint,” says Lauren Roumayah of Detroit Cookie Co. ASHLEY ZLATOPOLSKY CONTRIBUTING WRITER
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ts most popular cookie is the classic Chocolate Chunk, yet Detroit Cookie Co. is also known for Banana Pudding, Raspberry Cheesecake Oreo and B-Special cookies, the latter of which founder and owner Lauren Roumayah calls “an upgraded snickerdoodle.” Every day, Detroit Cookie Co., which has locations in Ferndale, Ann Arbor and Grand Rapids, serves up anywhere from 2,000-5,000 baked-fresh cookies. The work begins at 6 a.m., when bakers first arrive. “We treat it as if we are buyers preparing for the next season, except we do it every single night,” Roumayah explains.
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APRIL 21 • 2022
