Since launching in 2025, Odd Cookie has scaled from an exclusive launch at Summerhill Market to 700+ retail locations across Canada, including Longo’s, Metro, Healthy Planet, London Drugs and Calgary Co-op.
In its first year, the brand has sold more than 100,000 bags—or approximately 5 million cookies—and grown its team from 2 to 10+.
The idea behind that growth is surprisingly simple: Odd Cookie has essentially taken a cookie and made it behave like a chip. Its extra-thin, crispy, bite-sized format—with 50+ cookies in every bag—is designed for grabbing by the handful rather than eating one or two traditional cookies.
At a time when much of snack innovation is focused on adding more—protein, fibre, function—Odd Cookie is taking a different approach. Founders Lauren Levy and Devin Connell saw a cookie aisle divided between traditional junk food and health-focused options that often missed the mark on taste. They believed there was room in the middle: a ridiculously delicious cookie made with real butter and a short/simple ingredient list.
Both founders bring significant entrepreneurial experience. Devin is a chef and longtime food entrepreneur who founded Delica Kitchen and Crumb, while Lauren comes from a sales and marketing background and founded Ani+Wren. After collaborating on various projects over the years, they found themselves asking the same question at the same time: what’s next? Odd Cookie became the answer.
And the growth is continuing: Odd Cookie is expanding its retail footprint with Sobeys and will test the Costco channel through its first Costco Roadshow this fall.
The two founders jointly answered some emailed questions from Retail Insider:
What were the key factors that allowed Odd Cookie to grow from its 2025 launch at Summerhill Market to nearly 1,000 retail locations across Canada in its first year?
We entered a very established category with a product that was immediately different but also very easy for consumers to understand.
Odd Cookie is thin, crispy and bite-sized. It has the crunch and snackability of a chip while still delivering the familiar taste and ingredients of a cookie. That distinction, combined with bold packaging and a resealable pouch, gave retailers something new that could stand out on shelf without requiring consumers to learn a completely new category.
Summerhill Market was an ideal launch partner because it gave us credibility, direct customer feedback and an opportunity to prove the product in a retail environment. From there, we were extremely hands-on. We supported stores with demos, sampling, merchandising and direct relationships, while closely tracking what was happening at the individual store level.
That helped us grow from a single launch partner to nearly 1,000 retail locations across every province in Canada, including Longo’s, Metro, Healthy Planet, Sobeys and London Drugs. We’ve also recently expanded onto Amazon, giving consumers another way to discover and purchase the brand.
Within our first year, we generated more than $1 million in retail sales.
Our strongest-performing flavour to date is Chocolate Chip, which has also become an important entry point for new consumers discovering Odd Cookie. For us, the growth has been about more than getting listings. It has been about demonstrating that the product can generate interest, move off the shelf and earn reorders across very different retail environments.
What have you learned about what it takes for an emerging CPG brand to secure reorders and expand its presence with major Canadian retailers?
We learned very quickly that getting onto the shelf is just the beginning.
Once the product is in stores, the work becomes much more granular. You need to understand what is happening at the individual store level – placement, inventory, flavour mix, promotions, displays and velocity and then actually act on that information.
Chain-wide averages don’t always tell the full story. A store can have a completely different opportunity or challenge than another location within the same banner.
We’ve spent a lot of time building systems around store-level data and field execution because we want to understand not just whether something is selling, but why.
We’ve also learned that emerging brands need to be good retail partners. That means being responsive, supporting the stores, understanding the retailer’s objectives and being willing to do the work between getting a purchase order and getting a product into a shopper’s basket.
Our goal isn’t simply to add more doors. It’s to make the doors we’re in productive and earn the opportunity to expand.
Why did you choose to innovate around the format and eating experience of a traditional cookie rather than focusing on trends such as protein, fibre or other functional ingredients?
We saw an opportunity to innovate in a category where consumers already know what a cookie is supposed to be.
Rather than adding an ingredient simply because it was trending, we asked: What if we changed the way a cookie is experienced?
Odd Cookie is thin, crispy and bite-sized, packaged in a resealable pouch and designed to be snacked on throughout the day. It sits somewhere between a traditional cookie and a snack – familiar enough to understand immediately, but different enough to create curiosity.
That also creates an interesting retail proposition. The cookie category is highly established, so we wanted to give retailers something that could create a new snacking occasion while still delivering a product consumers immediately recognize.
And ultimately, we’re very focused on taste.
Protein and fibre can be meaningful attributes in the right product, but we didn’t want to add an ingredient simply because it was trending or make a functional claim at the expense of taste.
Our first job is to make a really good cookie. We believe innovation doesn’t always mean making food more complicated. Sometimes it means taking something familiar and making people experience it differently.
How have your previous entrepreneurial experiences with Delica Kitchen, Crumb and ANI+WREN influenced the way you are building and scaling Odd Cookie?
Our previous businesses gave us complementary – and very practical educations in entrepreneurship.
Through Delica Kitchen, Devin learned that making great food is only one part of running a successful food business. Consistency, labour, sourcing, margins and operational discipline become increasingly important as you scale. This is Crumb, Devin’s digital recipe platform, reinforced the importance of content, storytelling and understanding how people actually cook, eat and connect with food in their everyday lives.
ANI+WREN gave Lauren deep experience in retail, customer service, brand-building and community. It also demonstrated how quickly consumer behaviour can change and how important it is to evolve while preserving what customers originally loved about a brand.
Together, those experiences have made us very realistic about what scaling requires. The fun part is building the brand. The hard part is building the infrastructure underneath it.
In just 18 months, we’ve grown from a two-person operation to a team of more than 10. We’ve had to build systems around production, forecasting, inventory, distribution, retail operations and people much faster than we anticipated.
We’re also comfortable identifying what we don’t know, bringing in people with expertise where we need it and adjusting quickly when the business gives us new information.
With the Sobeys expansion and Costco Roadshow, what are your growth priorities for Odd Cookie over the next 12 to 24 months?
The next phase is really about scaling thoughtfully and making the business stronger underneath the growth.
The Sobeys expansion and Costco Roadshow are exciting opportunities to continue proving that Odd Cookie can perform across different retail environments – from conventional grocery to specialty retail and club.
Our priorities are to drive velocity, earn reorders, build national awareness and continue improving the operational infrastructure behind the brand.
We’re currently focused on scaling and streamlining our operations so that we can support a much larger business while maintaining the quality and consistency of the product.
We’re also preparing to launch a new SKU, which we’re particularly excited about. We have plenty of ideas for where the brand can go, but we’re being disciplined about innovation and making sure new products have a clear consumer and retail opportunity.
And then there are a few new partnerships and collaborations in the works that we can’t quite talk about yet but we’re incredibly excited about what they could mean for the brand.
The goal for the next stage isn’t growth for growth’s sake. It’s about building the team, systems, production capabilities and partnerships that allow us to do something much bigger. The first year was about proof of concept. The next chapter is about building the brand around it.
More from Retail Insider:
