Owners Pamela Weekes and Connie McDonald

Levain Bakery, home of the large, 6-oz. cookie, isn't so big itself with retail and production space of only 500 sq. ft. This is only one of the Manhattan retail bakery's many contradictions. Another is the owners themselves. Pamela Weekes and Connie McDonald are competitive athletes, who you'd think would be more likely to open a juice bar instead of a bakery full of high-caloric indulgences. In fact, it was while they were in training for an Ironman triathlon that they decided to open Levain.

Neither had any bakery experience. Weekes worked in fashion and McDonald had bounced around in several industries before going to culinary school. However, Weekes had grown up baking with her family and McDonald discovered a love of bread in culinary school, so they had the passion.

“We both like to eat and we wanted to make things we really liked and that nobody else made,” Weekes says. “There are so many bakeries, which is great, but we wanted to try to make things you couldn't get somewhere else.”

In 1995, they opened Levain Bakery in the kitchen of a local restaurant. At first, the bakery only made bread for wholesale customers. But when it moved into the 500-sq.-ft. space on the Upper West Side, the neighborhood discovered Levain.

“We did no marketing when we opened,” Weekes says. “We just opened our doors, and before we knew it, people from the neighborhood were stopping in wanting to buy our products.”

It was the turning point for the bakery. Weekes and McDonald had by this time expanded the product line to include cookies and pastries, and having their own space allowed them to exit the wholesale business to focus exclusively on retail. While the neighborhood found them, it didn't hurt that the bakery was written up in the New York Times soon after it opened, which Weekes and McDonald credit for much of their early success. However, the products kept the customers coming back.

The Times article was just the beginning of many lucky marketing breaks the bakery has benefitted from.

Happenstance marketing

Levain Bakery has made its way into numerous Asian guidebooks, as well as Weekes being interviewed for French television. Closer to home, the bakery has been featured in several Food Network shows. Weekes says she can tell which episode recently aired by the number of calls the bakery gets and the questions the callers ask.

“People get excited when they see the bakery,” McDonald says. “What they saw on television is real.”

Levain's most recent break was being featured on the Oprah Winfrey show in March. Oprah correspondent Mark Consuelos visited the bakery to show viewers how his favorite cinnamon buns are made.

The guidebooks and television shows have made the bakery a true destination for tourists. Levain is off the beaten path with its location on West 74th Street, between Broadway and Central Park, but thousands manage to find it. “A big percentage of our business is from tourists,” Weekes says. “We have a lot of international followers—people from Europe and Asia, especially.”

Frequently, the tourists become “regular” customers, coming back to the bakery every time they are in New York City.

It is not unusual to see the tourist customers having their pictures taken in the bakery while they eat the giant cookies. But all bakery customers find themselves on camera. The Manhattan location and a seasonal store in the Hamptons both feature Levain Bakery TV. The cameras take a still photo of the retail counter every 10 seconds. Customers can then go the bakery's website to view and download pictures of themselves until 8 a.m. the next morning.

The purpose of the cameras is two-fold, Weekes says. First, people like to see pictures of the bakery and especially of themselves in the bakery. Since it is such a tourist destination, the pictures are a good memento of their trip to Levain. Second, it draws people to the bakery's website. The website sells cookies and Levain merchandise, providing another sales opportunity for the bakery. The merchandise includes t-shirts, tank tops, sweatshirts, aprons and tote bags featuring the bakery's logo and website.