WILMINGTON – If you need a late night sweets fix, you’re in luck.
Insomnia Cookies, a late night bakery that stays open until 3 a.m., has opened at 1040 College Road, near the University of North Carolina – Wilmington. What sets the cookies and ice cream place apart, other than gooey, fresh cookies that are always served warm, is that customers don’t have to leave their homes or offices to enjoy them.
“Our big thing is that we deliver until late at night,” said Insomnia Cookies Senior Director of Marketing Megan Bruton, noting that the store delivers until 3 a.m. every day. “We want to provide the best product, so our cookies are always warm and fresh when they get to customers.”
The location in Wilmington is the chain’s sixth in North Carolina, a state where the company is trying to grow due to the number of colleges and universities.
“We were looking at Wilmington because of the university, since we kind of target college towns as our customer base,” Bruton said.
Bruton said the company is looking forward to getting involved with the community and providing sweets for different events. “We’re eagerly expanding in North Carolina, and we’re excited about being in Wilmington.”
Based on the response the store has gotten in the week since it opened, Wilmington is equally excited about Insomnia Cookies coming to town. According to Giana Marinelli, digital media manager for the company, the store was busy within days of opening, even without a lot of marketing through the press.
“We’ve been really busy through the day and late at night,” Marinelli said, counting both the deliveries they’ve made (they start at 10 a.m. on weekdays and noon on weekends) and the number of people served at their 1700-square-foot store. “Wilmington’s been really welcoming.”
According to Marinelli, the treats are baked all throughout the day by some of the store’s 22 employees. In addition to signature cookies, which come in flavors such as chocolate chunk, double chocolate mint and white chocolate macadamia, employees also make jumbo deluxe cookies, cookie cakes and cookiewiches, the company’s take on an ice cream sandwich. Customers can choose two different cookies for their “bread” parts and fill it with one of the ice cream flavors available at the store that day.
Those have been popular, according to Marinelli, as have most things the store has served to locals.
“The response has been great so far,” Marinelli said, noting they had heard there were people who had eagerly waiting for their arrival.
“It’s a really vibrant community, and we’re so excited to be here,” she said.
Though the store has a limited delivery range due to the need to keep the cookies warm and fresh, the delivery area includes the entire UNCW campus, as well as portions of Kerr and Wrightsville Avenues, Oleander Drive, Market Street and all of Randall Parkway, areas with many apartment and office complexes.
The minimum amount for delivery is a $6 order. Cookiewiches and containers of ice cream can also be delivered. To see the Wilmington store’s hours and menu, or to see its delivery area and place an order, visit its website.
