Father and son John and Leo Lashley make up ‘urban artistry’ bakery Brooklyn Brownie Co.
Based in Northampton, the business sells an array of New York-style brownies with pun-worthy names. There’s the Biggie Scoff (Biscoff), The Ole Black & White (Oreo), and Staten Island Dump (topped with pretzels, peanut butter cups and more).
John, who was born in New York, never envisioned himself in the baking industry. However, after hitting a “glass ceiling” more than 15 years into a career in creative advertising and broadcasting, he decided to work for himself and launched the brownie business in July 2019.
“The first wave of Covid-19 scared me, because we had only just started rolling and then I thought we were about to come to an abrupt stop. But it was the opposite – our sales quadrupled overnight, and we suddenly had to scramble to figure out a new production pipeline,” he says.