How Blondies Kitchen went from flogging cookies outside Old Street to becoming Selfridge’s most successful pop-up ever
Going from flogging their wares at Old Street station to becoming Selfridges’ Food Hall most successful pop-up in its history was a dream for North West London ladies Chelsie Collins and Kristelle Levy of Blondies Kitchen – before it became a reality.
A six-year dive into London’s dessert world propelled them right to the forefront of the city’s burgeoning sweet tooth, in an area of the industry where it was quite unusual to work in for women, according to Chelsie. “Kristelle and I trained to be chefs at a really similar time, which is quite unusual for girls to be honest, and for anyone from our area (in North West London). So we got talking on Facebook when we were both doing our courses, studying at different colleges,” she explained.
On their menu customers will find whopping seven-inch giant personalised cookies, Nuggets (but not as you know them), thin, chewy cookies like the Kinder Bueno Klassic with a K, and the NYC THIC. If you asked the girls, Chelsie would say her pick of the bunch would be their Kinder slice, a cookie slice with Kinder Bueno cream in the middle and Kinder Bueno chunks. And for Kristelle, her favourite is the Classic milk chocolate cookie, the first cookie Blondies Kitchen ever had on their menu – the one she’s been baking since she was a child.
The pair started out selling their cookies at Old Street station in 2016
The two always seemed to know of each other because of a family or friend connection, but only came together in 2016 after working various different jobs within the hospitality industry. Kristelle began her culinary training at Le Cordon Bleu in Bloomsbury, where the likes of Dame Mary Berry, Yotam Ottolenghi and Julia Child trained – to name a few. While Chelsie was a graduate of Leith’s School of Food and Wine (of Dame Prue Leith legacy), where her name is still proudly inscribed on the list of ‘BBC Good Food Scholars’ in the institute’s entrance hall.
Chelsie went on to become a Cookery Assistant for Good Food Magazine before progressing up the ranks as a Cookery Writer. She began catering on the weekend for a bit of extra cash. However when she contacted Kristelle to ask if she was keen to be involved, because “four hands are better than two”, she was turned down because her future business partner was already slogging 16-hour shifts as a chef in a restaurant.
“But I was like a dog with a bone, and I didn’t leave her alone. About a month and a half later she said, ‘Let’s meet for a coffee and see,’. I explained to her I had these [catering] jobs coming in and why doesn’t she do one with me?” Chelsie said. “I’m so pleased that Chelsie reached out to me. We absolutely love what we do and it’s great to be able to do it together,” Kristelle beamed.
They opened their Selfridges Food Hall pop-up in May 2017
Blondies Kitchen – the name – was borne out of working full time Monday to Friday then catering together every weekend. It had nothing to do with the sweet treat. “We called ourselves Blondies Kitchen and not anything cookie focused, because we were a couple of blondes. It was a white chocolate brownie, so it’s a play on words there. And quite honestly the trade mark and name were available, so we were like winner-winner,” she said.
A real turning point for the ladies was when they began selling Kristelle’s family cookie recipe at their catering gigs. Chelsie said: “Kristelle was actually selling the OG cookie recipe from a deli she was working in in Primrose Hill at the time. It was originally her recipe from her childhood which she used to bake as a kid.
“She said to me, ‘Chelsie when I put these on the menu they just fly off the shelf!’”
Chelsie admitted she needed to see it to believe it. Nut lo and behold, Kristelle’s prophecy came true and they completely sold out. Their decision made such an impact that clients, friends and family stopped asking them for everything else and just demanded their cookies, aptly dubbing them the “Cookie girls” in their local area.
Blondies Kitchen became the Food Hall’s most successful pop-up in history – and is now one of their permanent vendors
Inspired by the American concept of ‘milk and cookies’, the women gave up their day jobs to put all of their effort into running the UK’s first speciality milk and cookie bar. Funnelling the money they made from catering into the pop-up, Blondies Kitchen set up shop in Old Street station.
Chelsie said: “We were basically baking all night in Kristelle’s parents’ kitchen and serving all day from seven to seven with our product. We needed to test before we decided to ever turn into a business. I think we were quite naïve at the time, which actually worked in our favour.”
However, the first day in Old Street wasn’t all plain-sailing. “We baked 200 cookies for the first day. It got to lunchtime and we thought, ‘Are we even going to sell these, this is really sad?’ I was depressed with my calculator trying to work out how much we would have lost for the day. So we were like, let’s sample the product, cause once people try it, they’ll buy it.”
Once the travelling public got a taste, they had queues forming throughout the station’s concourse for the rest of the day. Their batches went from baking 200 to 800 cookies virtually overnight. “We weren’t sleeping. We had to rope in friends and family to help stamp our cookie bags, and it just really took off from there,” Chelsie laughed.
The girls credit social media, particularly Instagram, for the part it played in the evolution of their business. It attracted the attention of Taste of London food festival, who invited them to do a one-night stint as a dessert bar – but then came the email from Selfridges.
“It was a dream come true! They said they found us on social media and ‘would we consider going in on a pop up for four weeks at one of their spaces in their Food Hall?’ and we couldn’t really believe what we were reading,” Chelsie said. Kristelle continued, “It really does show the power of social media. Without Instagram, Selfridges would have never found us and we wouldn’t be where we are today.”
Chelsie always told Kristelle that Selfridges was where she wanted to end up. They shifted from their parents’ kitchen to a temporary space in Park Royal, baking all night with the help of Chelsie’s now-husband, Rob, a chef. Then serving on the shop floor all-day from 9am to 10pm.
After spending the entirety of May 2017 ferrying their goods to the public, they made history. “Selfridges asked us to go in permanently on the back of us being the most successful pop-up in the history of the food hall! We couldn’t believe it, we genuinely couldn’t believe it and we thought, ‘We don’t how we’re going to make this happen?’” said Chelsie.
Slogging through a gargantuan presentation, explaining their business forecast on how they’d performed during their pop-up, they sealed the deal with the department store – where you can still find them five years later. The girls even managed to pay back their family for the financial support they gave them and are about to pay off their bank loan entirely.
They now sell their giant personalised cookies and OGs from Covent Garden’s Piazza
Blondies Kitchen has since appeared in Covent Garden, Kingly Street in Soho, Brent Cross, and Westfield Shopping Centre in Shepherd’s Bush. Since the expansion of their business other issues have been affected by issues such as the the energy crisis and the ever-increasing prices of ingredients like butter.
“We use quality ingredients, we only use pure butter, sugar, and vanilla and the good stuff in the base. We hand make everything, so we don’t use machinery to weigh out any of our ingredients, we do it ourselves. We still individually place four chocolate chips in every cookie,” Chelsie said.
They’re currently navigating the cost of living crisis while still producing artisanal treats for everyone to enjoy. From seasonal goods to chunky cookies, personalised bakes the size of your head, Blondies Kitchen are pushing forward.