Cult favorite bakery Levain will open in Chicago later this year
— but this will be its first outpost beyond the East Coast. McDonald and her business partner, Pam Weekes, have had their eyes on Chicago for a while. They’re taking over the former Maude’s Liquor Bar space at 840 W.
McDonald and Weekes first met in a swimming pool nearly 30 years ago when they were training for a triathlon. They began baking their enormous six-ounce cookies loaded with chocolate chips and walnuts to help with carbo-loading. By 1995, they found themselves the owners of a small retail bakery where they baked and sold bread — hence the bakery’s name. Business was slow until one day McDonald decided to make a batch of their old training cookies, just for fun, and they sold out immediately.
The two founders had always intended to sell their cookies in grocery stores, but it took them nearly 20 years to figure out a formula. They decided the best solution would be a frozen bake-at-home model, which would, in addition to giving customers the “ooey-gooey” experience of the original, also make their kitchens smell good, just like a bakery. But although the frozen cookies, now available at Whole Foods, use the same recipe, they’re approximately a third of the size of the original.
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