Coho Cookies, a dessert delivery startup, delivers delicious, freshly made, custom-packed treats islandwide. Brunch had a chat with Coho Cookies Founder Riz about the story behind Coho and more. After running multiple startups in the US, Riz originally came down to Sri Lanka to set up a BOI (Board of Investment of Sri Lanka) project with foreign investors. In the midst of setting up the project, in February 2020, the Covid-19 outbreak started to rapidly spread across the world. The pandemic eventually halted the project and put it on hold indefinitely. While stuck here, Riz founded Coho Cookies as a side hustle and as a means to keep him engaged as he weighed his options. Just a couple of months after launching Coho, he was blown away by the overwhelmingly positive feedback and customer retention so he decided to stay in Sri Lanka and scale Coho. His vision with Coho’s is to deliver happiness and make fresh, custom-packed treats accessible to people across Sri Lanka.
Riz told us that when he first began Coho, he was still employed full-time, so he would spend around four to five hours on making cookies every day; eventually, he began spending more and more time on perfecting the cookies
that Coho soon became his full-time gig. Initially, Coho was just him baking, packaging, delivering, but as their brand grew, Coho expanded and now they are a fully fledged business. He started Coho with the humble chocolate chip cookie, which he then tweaked over time and changed it up to birth new flavours — soon, the white chocolate chip, the dark chocolate chip, and several other flavours became a hit amongst his customers.
Currently, Riz stated that with 1,600+ five-star reviews on UberEats, Facebook, and Google in under a year, Coho is Sri Lanka’s fastest-growing food startup. When talking about their unique selling point, Riz pointed out that although they are somewhat of a pre-order business, if one wanted cookies immediately, they’d be able to order off UberEats as they keep a certain stock ready at any given time. The longest you’d have to wait would be four hours, for a batch of freshly baked cookies.
We had the pleasure of trying out all of their flavours, and what shocked us the most was when Riz told us that he
had absolutely no baking experience prior to Coho – the taste of the cookies did not match that statement, in fact, the cookies tasted like they were made by someone that has been baking from the day they were born. The cookies were all incredibly fresh; when bitten into there was a slight crunch and yet, the inside remained gooey. There’s nothing like biting into a huge chunk of chocolate that had melted with the cookie – they were all incredibly delightful. To name a few flavours, you can choose from chocolate chip, white chocolate chip, triple chocolate and birthday sprinkles and for those that want something a little healthier – you can opt for the cinnamon cookies or the oatmeal cookies. In terms of customisation, Riz told us that they offer cookie slabs, which is essentially a giant square cookie, with a coat of icing on top. Customers can pick their desired flavour and also a note to be written in icing, which is great for when you’re in a pinch as Coho offers same day (within four hours) deliveries within Colombo every day. These cookie slabs make great birthday cakes, or get well soon notes or even a sweet congratulations gift.
Talking about the future of Coho, Riz told us that this year, they aim to spend a lot of time expanding their menu and adding new flavours, but adding a wider variety of desserts, and venture out of exclusively cookies. They will also be working on efficiency on their deliveries and streamline the process islandwide. At the moment, they don’t have any concrete plans to open up a store, but Riz added that the future is unpredictable and they are looking into the best outcome for Coho.
Instagram: @cohocookies
