• Cookie Backlash Turns to Boon

  • Sep 27 2024
  • Length: 3 mins
  • Podcast

Cookie Backlash Turns to Boon

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  • Summary

  • Homestyle faced criticism over Trump treats
    There was nothing sweet about the phone calls Homestyle Desserts Bakery began receiving last week about its butter cookies featuring images of presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, according to co-owner Laura Timmons.
    The quadrennial tradition, dating back more than two decades, had never drawn controversy until this month, when a Philipstown resident on Facebook denounced Homestyle for putting "the face of a 34-time convicted felon … who incited an attack on our nation's Capitol" on cookies and vowed to stop patronizing the bakery.
    Then the angry calls began, said Timmons on Monday (Sept. 23). "Why would you do that?" "You guys are disgusting." "We're not going to buy from you anymore." "We're going to tell all our friends."
    Standing behind the counter inside the Peekskill location (Homestyle also sells the cookies at its location on Route 301 in Nelsonville), Timmons pointed to a stack of white shipping boxes sitting on a table. The bakery is being inundated with a different type of call: Trump fans placing orders for shipments to Florida, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas and other states.
    A story posted by The Journal News on Sept. 20 about the controversy reached Dan Scavino Jr., a Westchester County native who was deputy chief of staff in the Trump White House and is an adviser to the former president's campaign. He reposted it on social media, and Homestyle has been swamped with orders, mostly for Trump treats.
    On Monday, Timmons said she expected to send out 2,000 Trump cookies and 200 with Harris' image. "We were selling even until that post [from Scavino] went out, and then it shifted," she said.
    Homestyle has been putting edible images on cookies and cakes for decades, said Timmons, with clients that have included the Yankees and their players. The visages of the Democratic and Republican candidates for president were introduced on cookies about 25 years ago and meant to be a bipartisan diversion, said Timmons.
    Unfortunately, the hardening divide between Democrats and Republicans has been characterized by increasing hostility. A Pew Research Center poll in 2022 found that growing numbers of partisans view each other as "more closed-minded, dishonest, immoral and unintelligent."
    Passions have led to attacks on businesses, but typically only if they promote one candidate over another. The owner of a Manhattan clothing store, for example, said a man wearing a Trump T-shirt attacked her last month, apparently angered by a pro-Harris poster in her window.
    In a Facebook post in response to the phone calls, Homestyle said that its employees and their family members and friends "hold different beliefs and choices" without threatening each other. "Everybody should be free to choose, and fighting over it is not the answer," said Timmons.
    State Sen. Pete Harckham, a Democrat whose district includes Peekskill, visited the bakery on Sunday (Sept. 22) after hearing about the calls. The senator, who in April 2022 presented Homestyle with a certificate recognizing it as a New York State Historic Business, recorded a video before leaving.
    "I know that we're divided and I know we're polarized, but cookies? Really?" he said, holding a microphone in one hand and a bipartisan order of six cookies for each candidate in the other. "Threatening a bakery is not a productive way to help your candidate."
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