This Tiny Little River Bakery Makes the Best Cookies in Miami

If you've ever driven along Northeast Second Avenue and 73rd Street in Little River, there's a good chance a pop of pink has suddenly caught your attention in a sea of white and bleak office buildings — a tiny white shop with bright pink shutters, wooden bistro tables, and a hot pink neon sign that reads, "Cookies."

It's the home of Cindy Lou's Cookies, the best cookies in Miami, and Miami's first artisanal cookie shop.

The story of the best cookies in Miami begins back in 1990 when founder and pastry chef Cindy Kruse graduated from Boston University with a degree in hotel and restaurant management and later from the Culinary Institute of America in New York City. Already a talented pastry chef, Kruse soon became part of the opening team for Wolfgang Puck's Spago restaurant in Las Vegas. Within the next decade, she worked with some of the country's best chefs, including Emeril Lagasse, Charlie Trotter, Jean Georges, and Charlie Palmer, to name a few.

That all came to a halt in 2004 when Kruse's mother became ill. Having to make a decision, she and her partner, Eric Paige, moved to Miami to assist her mother. Once in Miami, she immediately went to work as a pastry chef at some of the city's top restaurants at the time. However, years of working in corporate as a pastry chef for restaurants, including Barton G and Gigi drained Kruse, who knew she had to make a change in her career.

"After all of that, I got tired of working so hard for someone else," she says. "No one appreciated anything. You just kill yourself for someone else. In 2012, I said, 'Forget this corporate stuff,' and I quit my job. I went into my garage in Coconut Grove and I started baking cookies for Panther Coffee because Leticia [Pollock] loved my cookies. I bought an oven, I bought a mixer, I bought a table, and I bought a fridge, and I just started baking cookies for Leticia, the cofounder of Panther Coffee.'"
In just six months, one account in her garage in Coconut Grove turned into ten accounts, all thanks to word of mouth. "Everyone wanted the cookies I was selling at Panther Coffee."

Even with a sudden boom in business making artisanal cookies for accounts such as Panther Coffee and Pura Vida, she never once sought assistance — she built her reputation and repertoire on her own.

"’Til this day we’ve never done any marketing, any promotion, we don't pay anybody. I don't have a publicist, and I don't have a marketer. People are like, 'You need a publicist!' And I'm like, 'What is that and how much is that going to cost me?'" she says with a laugh.

After two years of working out her garage with ten bustling accounts, she realized she had to become a legitimate business. So, she rented a spot with Goldman Properties on Seventh and Collins at a hotel in South Beach. There, she rented a corner of its kitchen so she could set up her LLC.

"But South Beach was a nightmare to get to," she explains. "I was there for a year and a half. I was my purchaser, my prep girl, my baker, and to top it off, I was doing all of my deliveries myself. I was scooping, baking, packing, unloading my car. So, it was time to make the jump to get my little spot. I was just getting worn down doing everything myself.”

I look back and I go, “How did I do it?” But til this day, it’s always been a labor of love. I’m a classically trained pastry chef. I was doing things that were pretty, but it wasn’t stuff that made me happy.”

Thus, in 2017, Cindy Lou's Cookies was born, quickly earning itself New Times' best cookies of 2017.

For the first time in her long career as a pastry chef, she allowed herself to create the baked goods she always dreamed of creating, but on her own terms.

"On the wall of Cindy Lou's Cookies, I have a sign that says, “Cookies nourish the soul,” and it truly is the stuff that nourishes my soul,'" she explains. "Everything else paid the bills and everyone loved it, but this is something that's for me now. Making cookies makes me happy, and now I make other people happy with it."
Kruse would continue to bake cookies at her retail space and continue supplying cookies for her accounts for a few more years, until 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic struck the United States, which would change the restaurant landscape for more than three years.

"Right before COVID hit we had about 28 wholesale accounts. When COVID hit, everything went to zero overnight — overnight, everything went to zero," she says. "We were like, 'What are we going to do? We have no accounts?'"

Since her shop was so secluded in Little River, for the first time she couldn't rely on word of mouth. Therefore, she took matters into her own hands. She stayed open and took orders over the phone (but would leave the cookies in a bag or box outside for those who ordered to pick them up). Ironically, this was the busiest time for the cookie shop

"More than ever, people needed comfort food, and we were busier than ever during COVID," she explains. Then, we started baking for hospitals and first responders." Her cookies quickly spread like wildfire within the community.

Thanks to this, and a partnership with SBE entertainment group, she was able to set sights on a national expansion. Kruse has a Cindy Lou's Cookies location in New York City, which has been open for three years, one that just opened in Atlanta, and a location in Chicago underway. Although she had hoped for 20 locations by now across the States, COVID has made the process lag.

However, this expansion has been challenging, since she physically cannot be at every location at once. "I’m not going to say I love it as much as I thought I would love it," she admits.
Soon, the pandemic ended. When her former wholesale accounts came back to her, she denied the offers. Kruse fell so in love with simply serving customers directly, that she stuck to retail and never looked back.

When asked if she plans to open a second location in Miami, she says with a laugh, "Absolutely not.”

Although her U.S. expansion is still underway, Kruse is the kind of pastry chef who needs to interact with her customers directly daily. She might be the only specialty dessert company in Miami that has no plans to expand to a larger location in the city or even a second location, and she's perfectly content with that.

"I love Fireman Derek, I love Andrew from Night Owl Cookies, I love Max from Blueprint Cookies and Max'd Out Donuts Donuts, but listen — there's room for everybody [in Miami]. Everyone has their target audience, and this works for us,” she explains. "I am the shop and the shop is me. People come to the shop not just to buy the cookies, but to see me. It’s very personal. I have to be at the shop in Miami always."

It's this personal touch that allows her business to not have a set menu — her 40 different flavors rotate weekly, sometimes daily. They coincide with the seasons, and they even depend on what Kruse is in the mood to bake that day.

Flavors range from unique flavors like "Lemon Cloud" and "Quesito," made with guava and cream cheese as a nod to Miami, to PB&J and a cookie creation made up of peanut butter, marshmallows and toffee (one of New Times' favorites). Her classic flavors include chocolate chip, funfetti, and Nutella swirl. Her favorites are white chocolate macadamia and orange poppyseed with white chocolate.

"We have 40 different flavors that we rotate with the seasons and whatever I’m in the mood to make that day. That’s what I love more than anything," she says. "I wake up going, 'Hmm, what am I going to make today?' Because we don’t have a set menu, I get to do that, and then I post it on social media.'"

Oh, by the way, of course she runs her businesses' Instagram account.

"I’m also my social media girl!" she says with a chuckle. "People walk in and pull up my social media account and go, 'Hi, I want this that you just posted an hour ago!'"

Cindy Lou's Cookies. 7320 NE Second Ave., Miami; 305-456-8585; instagram.com. Open Tuesday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. Orders are available in person, over the phone, or can be placed online via your favorite food delivery app.