An unassuming cookie plays a key role in the latest season of Hulu’s “Only Murders in the Building.” And now, fans are clamoring for a bite of one.
That cookie, first shows up in the first episode of the third season now streaming on Hulu, as a welcome celebratory treat for the actors cast in the new Broadway play from Oliver Putnam (Martin Short) called “Death Rattle.” As the star of the show, Ben Glenroy (Paul Rudd) goes to sit down for a table read, he notices the cookies on the table. “There’s cookies here,” he says to his brother and manager, Dickie Glenroy. “Ben can’t have cookies. He is on a very strict diet for ‘CoBro.’ Cookies are a weakness,” Dickie replies.
“Even the name is sexy,” Glenroy says when he learns they are from Schmackary’s.
“When we tuned into the first episode, my jaw literally dropped to the floor,” Schmackary’s founder and owner Zachary Schmahl told TODAY.com about having his cookies be a part of the series. “I didn’t know how involved we would be in the storyline. But then as we kept watching the show, and every other episode, they were mentioning our name.”
Spoilers ahead.
As it turns out, by Episode 9, we learn the cookie becomes the weapon in the attempted murder of Ben Glenroy murder as rat poison is sprinkled on top of it on opening night. It wasn’t enough poison to murder Glenroy and he is pushed down an elevator shaft inside at the Arconia, the building on the Upper West Side where Martin Short, Steve Martin and Selena Gomez’s characters live.
“We knew an actor was going to be poisoned but we had no idea Paul Rudd was even in the season,” Schmahl says of the surprise.
Since the plot of the third season centers around the making of a Broadway show, Schmahl says the writers, who are based in Los Angeles, wanted to put in a few nods that true theater fans would recognize. One of the writers, Sas Goldberg, who once was on Broadway in 2017, suggested Schmackary’s as an Easter egg.
“They’re the official cookie of Broadway,” Schmahl recounts of what Goldberg said in the writers room. “And (the other writers) were like, ‘Sure, what the hell is a Schmackary?’ Then they started writing it as a joke. Then all of a sudden the joke became a bit and then the bit became part of the storyline. Before we knew it, they were like, ‘Let’s make it part of the weapon.’”
To make it all happen, Goldberg reached out to Schmahl this past February about getting Schmackary’s to participate and use its name.
“She couldn’t tell me anything about how we wouldn’t be involved until I signed this NDA with Disney,” he recalls. Once the deal was signed, Schmahl wasn’t concerned about his cookie being associated with poisoning someone.
“That’s what they stressed from the very beginning. Even though it’s being used as murder weapon, everybody in the audience is gonna know it wasn’t you guys poisoning them,” he says.
Schmahl, who was nicknamed “Zachary Schmackary” in high school, started baking cookies in his apartment, first as a hobby that turned into a passion. “It’s just something I had a knack for,” he says. Friends loved his cookies so much they asked him to start selling them and delivering them throughout New York City.
Coming from an acting background, he decided to open a storefront in 2012 on 45th Street and 9th Avenue — right in the heart of the theater district. Currently, “Moulin Rouge” is playing on the same street. The idea for the bakery was for a shop ‘from our grandparents’ childhood that doesn’t really exist anymore,” he explains. “We’re doing things the old school way and making it look like this bakery that doesn’t really fit inside New York City, but that’s exactly why it belongs in New York City. We like to say we really leaned heavily into that Midwestern charm.”
To get the business off the ground, Schmahl reached out to actors in the industry including Lesli Margherita to help spread the word. Eventually, Kristin Chenoweth got in touch.
“She has become almost like a friend because she is so in love with our product and she has plugged us so many times in so many different ways,” he says. “Audra McDonald has gotten involved and has been at our store several times. Within a year or so — it was just like it blew up and we became known as the ‘official cookie of Broadway.’”
As soon as this season’s first episode of “Only Murders” aired, Schmackary’s was flooded with online orders from people all over the country who wanted the cookie for weekly watch parties. Some fans tried to pick out specific cookies they thought they saw on the show to order.
The “Death Rattle Cookie” — used to poison Ben Glenroy — didn’t become available for online ordering until Oct. 1, 2023 (you can order them through Halloween), until Episode 9 aired. It’s a red velvet cookie with semisweet and white chocolate chunks inside with a vanilla cream cheese frosting. There’s a fondant death rattle on top as a decoration.
The cookie was offered in stores for one day only (Schmahl says it’s a lot of work to make the fondant decoration) and sold over 1,000 cookies in one day.
“We love a little cheeky humor. When we put the cookie out on the counter, we were sprinkling powdered sugar on one every once in a while. We told customers, ‘You might get the Ben Glenroy cookie,’ and it was hilarious! People were even asking for the one with the ‘poison’ on top,” he says.
Schmackary’s has franchised at least six stores in New York and New Jersey which haven’t opened yet, but “Only Murders” has solidified its place in pop culture nationally.
“This is the best publicity I could have ever hoped to have,” says Schmahl. “Being in business for 11 years, there’ve been so many awesome things that have happened and so many incredible people I’ve gotten to meet but this definitely takes the cake of the coolest thing we’ve ever gotten to be a part of.”