Sitting in the waiting room at the doctor’s office, 12-year-old Alaysia Sharma was listlessly flipping through a magazine when she came across a recipe that set her on a new path. She excitedly ripped out the instructions for espresso chocolate chip cookies to save for later. As soon as she got home, she asked her stepmom if they could make them together.
“I remember being like, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s so cool!’ Because when you’re 12, coffee sounds so grown up,” Sharma said.
She fell in love with baking that day, and now, at 30, she runs her own cookie business, Leave No Crumbz, out of her Long Beach apartment. While still working full-time in the tourism industry, Sharma sells curated cookie boxes each month with a variety of signature flavors that customers can mix and match in sets of six to 12. There’s no storefront. It’s all pickup and delivery in the Long Beach area…