This edible cookie dough company is putting its money — or dough — where its mouth is.
2 Dough Boyz, a new food cart based out of Chelsea’s Gansevoort Market, isn’t just selling flavors with names that pay tribute to classic ’90s hip-hop; it’s employing emerging rappers, co-founder Matt Maroone said.
The former Universal Records executive and his wife, Christina, are currently whipping up four flavors:
- Chocolate Chip Hop Hooray, a play on Naughty by Nature’s “Hip Hop Hooray,” circa 1993;
- Confetti to Die (sugar cookie dough with white chocolate chips and rainbow sprinkles), a tribute to the 1994 Biggie album “Ready to Die”;
- The World is S’mores (chocolate chip cookie dough with crushed graham crackers and toasted marshmallows), after Nas’ “The World is Yours”;
- and Nuttin Butter G Thang (chocolate chip cookie dough with M&Ms and whole Reese’s peanut butter cups), a nod to the Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg 1992 duet “Nuthin’ but a ‘G’ Thang.”
“I always loved the hip-hop idea of talking s— about your competitors and rival rappers going after the top spot,” said Maroone, 33, whose company’s name and its theme song are spins on an Outkast song with swagger aplenty. “I thought it would be really fun if a brand had that mentality.”
The Maroones brought that attitude to a childhood treat because they’re both “cookie fiends,” he said.
Six months ago, they spotted a niche for themselves in the edible cookie dough market, after waiting two hours in line outside the wildly popular DŌ, Cookie Dough Confections shop in Greenwich Village.
The couple developed its own dough recipe, which, like DŌ’s, incorporates pasteurized eggs and heat-treated flour.
The two didn’t, however, brainstorm the hip-hop puns all by themselves.
“I sent out an email to a bunch of buddies in the hip-hop world and people sent puns,” said Matt Maroone, a former vice president of marketing at SRC/Universal Records whose influential circle of friends includes a former NFL player, a doctor for the New York Jets and an executive at Tidal. “We created flavors based on the puns.”
2 Dough Boyz has street cred, too, when it comes to the music business: “Everybody that we hire has to have some kind of musical connection,” Maroone said. “So far we’re trying to hire rappers only. One of our dudes, he just graduated from St. John’s.”
The cookie dough impresario tapped local rapper Jamieson to write a company “anthem” over an Outkast beat.
“My competition, they don’t want beef / My mixing skills are sicker / and they know my mixing bowl is bigger,” the song boasts. “My dough on the block causin’ panic / ‘cos all my ingredients are organic.”
Decide whether the dough is worth all the hype outside the Gansevoort Market, at 353 W. 14th St. 2 Dough Boyz is serving the dessert in three sizes — Lil’ Wayne ($6), Fat Joe ($9) and Big Pun ($12) — from noon to 10 p.m. seven days a week.
