New York City-based gourmet cookie shop now open in Delray Beach

Delray Beach's Atlantic Avenue has a sweet, new option with the arrival of Chip City Cookies.

Officially opened on Friday, May 17, they offer over 40 varieties of fresh-baked, served-warm delights.

In describing their cookies, Chip City Cookies co-foundeer and chief brand officer Teddy Gailas pretty much nailed the definition of cookie heaven with "five- to six-ounce, thick cookies that are crispy on the outside, gooey in the center."

The shop features nine different cookies at all times. Five of them are their standards that include chocolate chip, cookies n' cream, s'mores and confetti, along with the dairy-free chocolate chip, which is also vegan. The remaining four are changed each week.

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Those four can include blueberry cheesecake, the brookie, cookie butter with Biscoff filling, dark chocolate peanut butter, horchata, mocha cookie, Nutella sea salt, oatmeal apple pie, peanut butter & jelly, red velvet cookies n' cream, teddi-fetti featuring Teddy Grahams, triple chocolate, and white chocolate macadamia.

The new week's menu is released on social media early each Friday and then runs for seven days.

In addition to the nine, there are also specialty cookies that are only released on certain holidays. A few of these include baklava, the black & white, cap'n crunch, cinnamon roll, cocoa crunch and the Italian rainbow cookie.

Need more? Well, after standards and specialty cookies, there's one more group: seasonal. Some of these include banana cream pie, banana nut oat, caramel apple cider doughnut, fluffernutter, butterscotch toffee, cannoli and candy corn. Yes, candy corn.

The Delray Beach shop represents Chip City Cookies' 39th opening

The Delray Beach shop represents the company's 39th opening and is special in that it will also feature their 'crookies,' which are only available at select stores.

"It's a croissant sliced in half, filled with cookie dough and baked to perfection," said Gailas. Yes, if you thought you heard angels singing, I heard it too. There are four varieties including chocolate chip, confetti, cookies n' cream and triple chocolate.

If you want one, you might want to get there early as they make one batch of these each morning and when they run out, that's it. Well, until the next day.

Using high quality flour, chocolate and European butter with a higher fat content, Gailas said "We use only top quality ingredients."

Though there are over three dozen Chip City locations now, this venture started out pretty low-key.

Gailus said he and co-founder Peter Phillips are lifelong friends who grew up together in Queens, New York. He said that he was working in finance and that Phillips was in construction and they were constantly brainstorming about possible side gigs.

Despite not having any background in baking or culinary experience, and almost on a dare to each other, Gailas said they thought "a cookie shop would be good idea if we could sell unique flavors."

Coming up with several recipes and varieties of their own, they opened their first small shop in Astoria in Queens in 2017.

He said it was just a small neighborhood shop and "at first we were only open a few hours a day." That changed quickly as word got out and Gailas said that pretty soon they had "lines around the block."

What started out as a part-time side gig, quickly went full time, then seven days a week.

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Though they have stores in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Maryland, Virginia, Massachusetts, Illinois and several already in Florida, Gailas said Delray Beach "Felt like a good place to be."

He added that with so many restaurants, patrons can go for "a post dinner walk, come in and enjoy a nice warm cookie."

Chip City Cookies

Where: 302 E. Atlantic Ave., Delray Beach

Hours: 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday to Sunday

Information: chipcitycookies.com

Eddie Ritz is a journalist at The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at eritz@pbpost.com. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Chip City Cookies gourmet shop in Delray Beach, Florida