Palisadian Baking Duo Opens Door to New Cookie Good Store

“How do you take something everyone knows, and knows probably in five or six different flavors, and create something entirely new and different but also familiar?”

That was the conundrum Palisadian Ross Canter was faced with when starting his business Cookie Good in 2008 during the writer’s strike.

Canter was a full-time writer in the entertainment industry at the time and when he tired of picketing for the day, he would head to the kitchen and bake cookies – a passion of his since college when he had a one-man brownie-baking business.

Canter said it was his wife Melanie’s idea that they try their hand at cooking up a cookie business.

“I was writing. It’s a really hard thing filled with insecurity, empty screens, feeling bad about yourself and doubt,” Canter remembered. “But I love making cookies. I don’t question my cookies or have doubt about my cookies. I love that feeling, and I remember wishing I could feel cookie good for the rest of my life.”

And thus, Cookie Good was born.

The cookie (and brownie) bakery started as a husband/wife business out of their house a few years ago, but Cookie Good just opened the doors to its new Santa Monica storefront at 2448 Wilshire Boulevard last month.

“We wanted to create a space that was bright, happy and easy,” Canter said of the space that features an exposed kitchen so customers can watch the cookie-baking process from start to finish.

Canter said the shop’s bestseller is a caramel-pretzel-chocolate chunk cookie described on their website as “salty/sweet, chewy/crunchy and just plain awesome.”

Cookie Good also boasts flavors like apple pie, birthday cake, glazed donut, Mexican hot chocolate and more. Canter said the shop, whose flavors are featured on a rotating basis, always has 14 different cookies available in addition to five or six different brownie flavors and a handful of gluten-free cookie flavors.

“We love the challenge of coming up with something that’s really cool and different,” Canter said, adding that Cookie Good can even work with customers to create a custom flavor for large orders.

While Canter used to do all of the baking himself, the company has since hired additional bakers and dough-makers. Melanie is in charge of the front of house and packaging, since the treats can be shipped anywhere in the country and have even been shipped to Canada and London.

“We get as many comments about how the box looks as we do about how the cookies taste,” Canter said, adding that during the holidays, Cookie Good bakes upward of 6,000 cookies a day.

“There’s something about cookies,” Canter said. “They’re portable and are a good canvas to do different things,” Canter said. “There is something very simple and accessible about a cookie.”