Lil Reggie Cookies offers sweet relief to the nightlife on Glenwood South
The Friday-night crowd on Glenwood South has just downed its first drink special when Reggie Sanders arrives with an irresistible distraction, a temptation that smells of oatmeal butterscotch and chocolate chip.
He sets up his sidewalk stand on a popular corner, unfolds the life-sized cardboard cutout that shows his smiling face and hangs a banner to announce his homemade creations: Lil Reggie Cookies.
“Every cookie’s got love in it,” he says as the line starts to form.
At only 18, Sanders turned his lifelong baking hobby and sophisticated sweet tooth into a mobile cookie empire with its own website and merch selection that features T-shirts, polos, aprons, handbags and cell phone cases.
His red velvets and cinnamon rolls with icing sell by delivery or at The Dankery on Hillsborough Street, or the Raleigh Flea Market on weekends. And three nights a week, he boxes them up on Glenwood, where the customer base sometimes comes well-lubricated, craving solid food.
“They probably order a dozen and don’t even know what they’re doing,” Sanders jokes. “I say, ‘You sure about that, sir?’”
Other than Sanders’ youth, a mission to aid Raleigh’s needy sets Lil Reggie apart from the average cookie enterprise. Out of every dollar he collects, 30% goes into a feed-the-homeless fund.
This charitable bent dates to his kindergarten years, when his father, Lamont Sanders, would take him to Raleigh’s rougher-edged neighborhoods as a street evangelist, preaching hope to the homeless and hopeless.
“I would take him with me to show him how this is other people’s reality,” his father recalls while helping to set up the cookie stand. “Just because you have a comfortable life doesn’t mean that’s the way for everybody. I took him to the hood and I let him see how the guys would cook up crack cocaine.
He smiles at the memory.
“When he got older, I said, “Keep the principle. Change the product.’“
Cookie baking started with his mother’s chocolate recipe and slowly expanded. Like any seasoned baker, he burned a lot of batches, scorched a lot of oatmeal raisins. But by the time he hit high school, he was working out of a commercial kitchen, blowing out mixers and competing for oven space.
He tried unsuccessfully to rent commercial space in downtown Raleigh and on Old Wake Forest Road, but owners who sounded enthusiastic on the phone changed their tune when they met the teenage businessman in person.
He shrugged this off.
On Glenwood, he cuts a figure that is impossible to resist — young, energetic, well-spoken, eager to talk to customers three times his age. If you’re like me, you buy a half-dozen cookies even though you don’t much care for sweets, and you feed them to your own teenager with gentle nagging remarks like, “See? Look what one kid can do ...”
Sanders is so taken with his business growth that he left high school before graduating, a fact his parents didn’t care for but accept with his promise to home school and finish with a GED. To hear Sanders talk about it, he can’t sit still in class all day when there’s so much opportunity already bubbling.
You can’t help but root for Lil Reggie, charging into a hard world with a tray full of treats, all full of love.
Uniquely NC is a News & Observer subscriber collection of moments, landmarks and personalities that define the uniqueness (and pride) of why we live in the Triangle and North Carolina.
