Back in 2018, San Diego resident Sharian Lott got a call from her daughter, Broadway actor Loren Lott, who wanted to tell her about the glorious “Funfetti” cookie she had just consumed at Schmackary’s, a popular bakery that opened in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood in 2012.
Intrigued, because her daughter was a careful eater who had avoided gluten for years, Lott decided she needed to taste the cookies that brought her daughter so much joy. Not only did Lott end up sharing her daughter’s passion for Schmackary’s, she put her money down on it.
At 10 a.m. Saturday, Lott will open the first West Coast franchise location of Schmackary’s in Hillcrest, on University Avenue near Richmond Street. The 1,700-square-foot location will not only serve a rotating selection of Schmackary’s 110 cookie flavors, it will also become the commissary kitchen for all the future Schmackary’s franchises in California and possibly Oregon and Washington state.
Up until August 2023, Schmackary’s was a cult favorite among Manhattan’s Broadway theater community. Founded by former Broadway actor Zachary “Zach” Schmahl, Schmackary’s became known as the “official cookie of Broadway” by creating new specialty flavors each year named after the latest Broadway shows.
Sharian Lott, center foreground, is the franchise owner for the first West Coast location of Schmackary’s cookies, opening Feb. 28, 2026, in San Diego’s Hillcrest. Lott is flanked by Schmackary’s founder Zachary Schmahl, left, and chief operating officer Jonny Polizzi, along with the new shop’s employees. (Jeromy Estabillo Chan/Slique Media)
But the store’s fame exploded nationally in 2023 when a box of Schmackary’s cookies was used for the attempted murder of a theater actor played by Paul Rudd in the Hulu comedy series “Only Murders in the Building.” With that publicity push, Schmackary’s opened its first franchise shops in the greater New York/New Jersey region.
Schmahl and his business partner, Chief Operating Officer Jonny Polizzi, were in Laguna Beach for a wedding that year when they got the idea to expand their franchise efforts to California. Just a day after making that decision, they got a call from Lott who had read online about their franchise plans.
“It was a kismet thing,” Schmal said, in an interview at the shop on Thursday. “As soon as she told us the story about her daughter, we knew she was the one and we’d love to give her the keys to the kingdom.”
An employee at Schmackary’s gourmet cookie store serves up a fresh-scooped ice cream cookie sandwich. The shop opens to the public on Saturday, Feb. 28, at 1255B University Ave., San Diego. (Jeromy Estabillo Chan/Slique Media)
The process of finding a space, gutting it and building out a commissary kitchen and shop took 18 months, and Lott, Schmal and Polizzi said they’re still fine-tuning the ingredient sourcing needed to duplicate exactly the flavors and textures of the company’s famously soft and chewy cookies.
Like the Hell’s Kitchen original, the Hillcrest store will operate from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily, seven days a week. The shop will always offer 12 varieties of fresh-baked cookies, as well as a bar cookie, a brownie and a crispy treat, plus a few breakfast pastries each morning. Schmackary’s swaps out its cookie flavors every two weeks, and continuously bakes small batches throughout the day to keep display trays full. The shop also offers coffee drinks, milk shakes, banana pudding and ice cream cookie sandwiches.
An employee frosts a Funfetti cookie at Schmackary’s cookie shop, opening to the public on Saturday, Feb. 28, at 1255B University Ave., San Diego. (Jeromy Estabillo Chan/Slique Media)
Besides having Lott run the commissary kitchen to make and ship frozen dough to future West Coast Schmackary’s locations, Schmahl and Polizzi said they hope Lott will become a multi-store franchisee. Lott said she’ll see how things go with the first store, but she’s encouraged by the high level of foot traffic that the shop received in its limited-hours soft-opening this past week.
Lott recently retired after a 30-year career with the San Diego College of Continuing Education. She followed in the education-related footsteps of her mother, the late Dorothy L.W. Smith, who served on the San Diego Unified School District Board of Education from 1981-1988 and was a longtime board member for San Diego’s Black-identified Common Ground Theatre. She said she was able to purchase the franchise with the inheritance her mother left behind when she died in 2022.
Now, as a business owner with 16 employees, Lott said she’s “proud and excited to now be able to hire and support students from the very community that meant so much to me. That feels ike a true full-circle moment.”
To celebrate the grand opening this weekend, the first 100 customers in line on Saturday and Sunday, Feb. 28 and March 1, will receive a free cookie. Customers can also receive a buy one get one free deal on cookies all weekend. More opening weekend specials are available on the local store’s Instagram page at instagram.com/schmackarys.
A selection of fresh-baked cookies at Schmackary’s gourmet cookie shop, which opens Saturday, Feb. 28, at 1255B University Ave., San Diego. (Jeromy Estabillo Chan/Slique Media)