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For years, expats in Shanghai complained about the lack of quality desserts in the city. Perhaps they just meant familiar desserts, as locals were more than happy to point them to delicious egg tarts, mooncakes or Taiwanese iced treats. But alas, when it came to sweets, there seemed to be a Great Wall-sized divide between East and West.

In an effort to bring together sweet tooths from both sides of the dessert dividing line, in 2010 Lexie Comstock started Strictly Cookies, an American-style cookie delivery company in Shanghai that she hoped would delight expats and win over locals along the way. Having first visited China in 2000 while in middle school, Comstock later plunged into studying Mandarin and majoring in East Asian Studies at Harvard. After graduating, she returned to China to work in marketing and PR but eventually decided to set out on her own. And what a difference a career change can make. What began as a one-woman operation, with Comstock doing everything from baking and packaging to bicycle deliveries, has since blossomed into a full-on dessert bar called Nom Nom, which opened in spring 2013. The venue is a partnership between Strictly Cookies and Snow Maple Desserts, which specializes in homemade ice cream and Belgian waffles.

As you walk into the café, which has seating for about 20, the aroma of fresh waffles pleasantly competes with the sweet scent of cookie dough. The dessert bar and baking kitchen is located in a typical Chinese office building, allowing Comstock to have personal interactions with her increasingly loyal local customers, whom she estimates make up about 80% of the walk-in clientele. As with wine, cheese and other Western foods trying to enter the Chinese market, cookies have also required a period of education and adaptation to spread from early adopters to a wider audience. To help speed the process along and to please the local clientele – who weren’t accustomed to American-style, ahem, extravagance – Comstock created a “skinny” version of her signature “Strictly Chocolate Chip” cookies, with two-thirds less sugar than in the original recipe.

As more Chinese find out about the desserts at Nom Nom, it appears – to a certain extent – that tastes are changing and increasingly adapting to the American level of sweetness. To Comstock’s surprise, one of the top sellers has been “The Unifier,” a rich cookie-brownie hybrid that practically demands a glass of milk to go along with it. In the spirit of unification, a huge glass window between the café area and the kitchen allows curious customers to watch the standard repertoire of cookies, as well as a flavor of the month, being made fresh daily. It also allows the crew to use the café as a focus-group type laboratory, asking patrons for direct feedback on what they like and what could be improved – a level of interaction that was previously unattainable for Comstock as an at-home entrepreneur.

Ice cream sandwich at Nom Nom Dessert Bar, photo by UnTour ShanghaiNom Nom’s peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies will bring any American on a quick trip down memory lane. But our favorite treat pairs two gooey “Oatmeal Raisin the Roof” cookies with a layer of cinnamon ice cream, to make exactly the type of sandwich we’d skip lunch for (35 RMB, about $5.75). The cookies tend to be small yet thick, making them ideal for dunking, and remain soft and fresh for several days – perfect for taking a package home (40 RMB for five). After the runaway success of the yangmei-coconut cookie of the month earlier this summer, Nom Nom has more products using local and seasonal ingredients in the works. Additionally, Comstock draws from Chinese culture to come up with special treats, such as “mooncake cookies” – thick sugar cookies dubbed “mookies” – in homage to the traditional Chinese sweets served on Mid-Autumn Festival.

Beyond the range of cookies on offer, Nom Nom’s “Tofulati” shakes have been a major hit with the more health-conscious (and mildly lactose-intolerant) crowd. The soy-based iced dessert mimics the texture of Italian ice cream, but has fewer calories, and incorporates fresh fruit. The symbiotic partnership of the two brands also resulted in the “Nom Nom Cookie Shake,” featuring chocolate chip cookie chunks and vanilla ice cream – a homemade marriage of equals that is greater than the sum of its delicious parts.

Although Comstock doesn’t have any professional baking training herself, she has enjoyed having the freedom to experiment with recipes – as well as the flexibility to control her own schedule – that comes with running her own business. She says being able to make and sell something always appealed to her in a way that her office jobs never did. “I’ve always been kind of a hustler in that way,” she remarks with a smile. “I don’t have problems with authority or anything… But I’m all about efficiencyNom Nom Dessert Bar, photo by UnTour Shanghai and being productive. So when someone tells me to work from 9 to 6 no matter how much work you have, that just doesn’t incentivize me at all.”

The office building location has given the Nom Nom partners a deeper understanding of Chinese palates. “I’ve used it to really focus on local customers… I see this as a research opportunity,” Comstock says. Her first two hires, an ayi (“auntie”) who works in the kitchen and an operations manager, are with her to this day, and their insights have also been vital to Strictly Cookies’ successful growth. With a staff that now includes bakers, deliverymen and cashiers, Comstock has realized the value of having locals firmly on her side. Her advice for entrepreneurs in China looking for sweet success? Be patient, and get used to running all aspects of a business before trying to expand. “You can’t expect it all to just come together at once. You have to have a lot of grit and suck it up and do the grunt work,” says Comstock.

In the meantime, you’ll find us nomming our way through the menu, transported for a brief moment by the sweet comforts of home. Mrs. Fields had better watch her back.

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Published on August 08, 2013

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