Students from campuses across Rochester flocked to Mt. Hope Ave this past Monday night for Insomnia Cookies’ Annual PJ Party.
A yearly tradition since 2019, this event welcomes students back to school with some sweet deals — so long as you arrive wearing your finest sleepwear. People wrapped in fuzzy blankets and dressed in pajama pants lined the street, eating free samples of chocolate cookie butter (basically the equivalent of raw brownie batter) and dancing to Insomnia Cookies’ carefully curated playlist of TikTok hits. While the event was slow to start, by 10:00pm there was a line of eager students, myself included, stretching down the sidewalk.
Perhaps the best-dressed attendees were the Insomnia workers themselves, all decked out in animal onesies and glow stick crowns. They led games of trivia, tic-tac-toe, and rock-paper-scissors, handing out prizes to all the winners. Students collected Insomnia Cookies pop-sockets, sunglasses, and pens, but by far the most coveted items were the free cookie samples.
Trivia winners earned a six pack of mini cookies in signature flavors like chocolate chunk, snickerdoodle, and white chocolate macadamia nut. Other lucky students won full-size samples of Insomnia Cookies’ newest release, the Cereal N’ Milk Cookie. True to its name, this cookie is chock full of Fruity Pebbles cereal, white chocolate chips, and marshmallows mixed into its brown butter batter. While it might be too sweet for some, one late-night worker heralded it as “the best cookie we’ve ever sold”, and I’d have to agree.
There was also a special-edition box cover and decoder flashlight that revealed a QR code to unlock three free months of CookieMagic. But all good things must crumb to an end, so this was only available for the first 50 students to order the $12 12-pack deal. This subscription includes one free cookie per day, free delivery, 20 percent nationwide shipping (to share the love), and exclusive new discounts every week. Not a bad way to kick off the school year in my opinion!
I will be waiting for next year’s party with bated breath, but until then, I hope all you smart cookies have an incre-dough-ble semester!
