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.
It’s a small enterprise but one with big heart. Every cookie Sharma makes has a story and is inspired by memories she holds close.
“Everything I do, I want to bring back that joy that I had when I was a kid. Because when you get older, life becomes so complicated, and I feel like it’s so much harder to find joy in things that are so simple,” Sharma said.
While she has top-selling cookies like the brown butter chocolate chip and the vegan salted dulce de leche snickerdoodle available year-round, Sharma adds a couple of rotating flavors to the menu each month. The cookie box of the month features two rotating flavors only available for that month and one signature flavor that customers already know and love.
Sharma’s cookie box for April was created as an ode to her parents. The caramelized white chocolate macadamia cookie was inspired by her dad’s sweet tooth. He used to always buy the Pepperidge Farm soft-baked white chocolate macadamia nut cookies. Sometimes, Sharma said, he would share. Sharma put her own twist on her father’s favorite cookie by adding Cara Cara oranges and caramelizing the white chocolate.
The brown butter toffee oat streusel cookie is a tribute to her mom. It started as a Christmas gift and was originally a simple brown butter toffee cookie. Sharma said her mom loves butter and used to snack on chunks of it as a kid, so she wanted to make something that leaned into that buttery nostalgia. Seeing how much her mom — who is usually pretty picky when it comes to sweets — loved the cookies, Sharma knew they had good potential to be something more.
“For me, that’s a very big deal getting my mother’s validation for something, because she’s very hard to please. I was like, ‘Oh my god, I finally did it!’” Sharma said.
Sharma added oats and streusel to give the cookie more texture and said it has been a big hit with customers.
Sharma started Leave No Crumbz in 2024, but in her logo, she says “Est. 1996,” the year she was born, because, in a way, the cookies are telling her story.
“It’s me, it’s all of me wrapped in something that you can take with you and enjoy,” she said.
Sharma said her favorite part of owning her business is creating joy, not just in herself but in her customers as well.
“Life is hard, and it’s complex, and if something as simple as a cookie can make someone’s day better, then I feel like I’ve accomplished something,” she said.
You can order the monthly cookie boxes at leavenocrumbz.com. Orders can be made for pickup or delivery in the Long Beach area.