What do a former basketball star, a jewelry mogul and a Dallas mayor have in common? A sweet tooth.
Their soft spot for warm cookies has inspired each one to open their wallets to Tiff’s Treats, an on-demand cookie and brownie delivery startup that announced it raised $15 million on Wednesday. The Austin company now counts model and designer Kendra Scott and former Dallas Mavericks star Dirk Nowitzki as investors, while former Dallas mayor Mike Rawlings was already on board.
“There is something about our brand that resonates with people,” CEO Leon Chen wrote in an email to Built In.
Tiff’s Treats was born out of a missed connection. In 1999, Tiffany Taylor stood up Leon Chen for a date, and baked him a batch of fresh cookies as an apology. The sweet treat was a hit: Tiffany Taylor is now Tiffany Chen and the two co-founded Tiff’s Treats, which has now delivered more than 100 million fresh cookies to Texas, Georgia, Tennessee and North Carolina residents.
The startup plans to use the fresh funds to expand its cookie delivery service nationwide, as well as invest in its tech, Chen said.
“Our No. 1 line item in the budget is always technology,” he said.
“We were ‘on-demand’ before that was a thing,” Chen continued. “We started in a shared kitchen space, so we were [a] ‘ghost-kitchen’ before that was a fad. We focused on technology early on.”
The company plans to launch an online loyalty program within nine months, Chen said. Tiff’s Treats also plans on expanding into new states next year, although “there is still a lot of room for growth in our current markets,” he added. Chen did not name the company’s competitors, but noted that, in some cases, Tiff’s Treats competes with non-food delivery items more than they do with bakeries.
“To us, it’s the use case, not the product, that makes someone a competitor or not,” Chen said. “There are a lot of wonderful cookie businesses out there. That doesn’t make every one of them our direct competitor.”
After hiring an additional 500 employees this spring, the company now counts 1,400 members to the Tiff’s Treats team. Chen said the startup is currently looking for software developers and human resources representatives.
The recent round brings total investment in Tiff’s Treats to $70 million. In addition to Nowitzki, Scott and Rawlings, investors in the company include Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital, Venturi Capital, executives who have worked at Starbucks and Whole Foods Market, and brand ambassadors Brooklyn Decker and Andy Roddick.
