Late one night in 2013, Antoine Tang was craving a warm, freshly made cookie.
No bakeries were open at that hour, so he Google'd "best chocolate chip cookie recipe" and tried his hand at making them on his own. After that night, he kept baking. He started bringing cookies to his church group, then graduated to selling them online. The business grew organically to the point that he quit his job at the Apple store and spent his days delivering cookies to homes and companies. In 2016, Tang opened Antoine's Cookie Shop in downtown San Mateo.
He's now gearing up to open a second location at Town & Country Village in Palo Alto in the new year. Tang is taking over the space where Babka by Ayelet closed earlier this year.
A dozen cookies from Antoine's Cookie Shop in San Mateo. Photo courtesy Antoine Tang.
The first cookies Tang ever sold were chocolate chip, oatmeal chip and peanut butter cup. He would wake up at 3 a.m. to bake cookies, put his young daughter into a car seat in his red convertible and deliver throughout the Peninsula. He was obsessed in particular with chocolate chip cookies, constantly trying and comparing different bakeries' versions.
"I'm the kind of guy that would drive to the mall and find parking just to go to Mrs. Fields and buy three cookies and go home," Tang said. "I love cookies that much."
Antoine Tang is opening a second location of his Antoine's Cookie Shop in Palo Alto in early 2021. Photo courtesy Antoine Tang.
The shop now also sells walnut chip, toffee, dark chocolate chip, white chocolate-macadamia and snickerdoodle cookies. Tang encourages his customers to ask for new cookie flavors. Many customers lobbied for the cookies and cream cookie, which is now his best seller, accounting for 22% of overall sales. (Social media posts also hint at a "secret" menu, including an Oreo-stuffed chocolate chip cookie.)
The Palo Alto location will sell the same cookies as the original San Mateo shop. Look for an opening in mid-January.
