What is Urban Cookies Bakeshop?
Urban Cookies Bakeshop is a Phoenix bakery that took eighteen years to open a second store, and when it did, it chose Scottsdale. The shop is at 8776 E Shea Boulevard, Suite 108, in the Pima Crossings plaza on the northwest corner of Shea Boulevard and the 101, a 1,200-square-foot former Subway between a Flagstar Bank and a UPS Store, across Shea from the HonorHealth Scottsdale Shea Medical Center. It opened in early 2024; the Scottsdale Independent reported in late August 2024 that it had been running for seven months.
The company behind it belongs to Brady and Shaun Breese, a married couple who started Urban Cookies in 2005 selling four kinds of cookie in gift boxes online, opened a retail shop on 7th Street a year later, and nearly lost it in the 2008 crash. They added cupcakes to survive, and in 2011 went on Food Network’s Cupcake Wars with the plan, as the bakery tells it, to win or close the bakery. They won. Lines formed around the building, revenue doubled within two years, and the show has been the bakery’s calling card ever since. Brady bakes, self-taught, and says he “bakes like a cook”; Shaun runs marketing and the customer side.
What they sell is from-scratch American bakery goods made with organic sugar, European-style butter and unbleached flour: thick cookies (milk and dark chocolate chip, pineapple coconut, cowboy, snickerdoodle, peanut butter, and dairy-free and gluten-free versions), cupcakes with tall coils of frosting, dessert bars like salted caramel nut and double chocolate brownie, to-go cakes such as classic churro and birthday cake, and boxed assortments. The comment the owners say they hear most is that the treats are not too sweet. All the doughs, batters and frostings are made at the Phoenix bakery and baked fresh each morning here.
It is a counter, not a cafe: a small case, a couple of stools, no public bathroom, open Monday through Saturday and closed Sundays. Who is it for? Shea Corridor parents picking up a dozen for a birthday, hospital staff on a break, and the people who drove to 7th Street for years. Our verdict: the best cupcake in Scottsdale, sold from the least glamorous room, and a reason to pull off the 101.
Ordering at Urban Cookies
Know the hours. The shop is open Monday through Friday 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., Saturday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and closed Sunday, plus a published list of holiday closures (Memorial Day, the Fourth, Labor Day, Thanksgiving and the day after, Christmas and the day after, New Year’s Day). Nothing bakes on Sunday, so a Monday morning visit gets the freshest case of the week.
Order ahead. The bakery’s own page says it plainly: pre-order online or arrive early, because they sell out. The Scottsdale site offers same-day pickup, future pickup, Uber Eats delivery and catering delivery through EZCater. Custom cakes, weddings and corporate orders go through the Phoenix bakery. Prices are not published on the website or the ordering page, and we are not going to guess at them; cupcakes and cookies are sold singly and by the box, and a text to 480-604-5491 gets a quote.
What to get. The three items the bakery features on its homepage are the lemon cupcake, the double chocolate with sea salt and the pineapple coconut cookie, and they are the right three. The What Now Phoenix announcement in 2023 listed the marble coffee and lemon honey cupcakes, the cowboy cookie, birthday cake and chocolate graham dipped cookies, salted caramel nut and double chocolate brownie bars, and classic churro and birthday cakes as the opening lineup, with seasonal rotations. The dairy-free confetti cookie, made with natural sprinkles and organic cane sugar, is the one to buy for the kid with the allergy; the bakery is clear that it is not an allergen-free facility and cross-contact occurs.
Seasons. Fall cupcake flavors run September 1 through November 30; the Halloween lineup (spooky spiders, bewitched bats, friendly ghosts, classic churros) is sold October 27 through 31; holiday sweets and gift boxes run December 1 through 24. These sell out fastest, so the order-ahead advice doubles in those weeks.
Getting there. Pima Crossings is the center on the northwest corner of Shea and the 101, entered from Shea. Park in front; the lot is wide and free and there are two accessible spaces near the door, with a no-step entry. There is no bathroom and no real seating, so plan to eat in the car or take the box home. For coffee to go with it, see our coffee guide; for a sit-down dessert with the kids, see Scottsdale with kids, because this is not it.
The bakery that waited eighteen years
Urban Cookies is a small business story told in survivals. The Breeses opened in 2005, before Instagram and before organic was a selling point, with a product line of four cookies. The 2008 crash and a first baby in 2009 brought them close to closing; the cupcake line and Cupcake Wars in 2011 saved them. In 2017 their landlord sold the 7th Street building to a developer for a Starbucks, and the forced move two miles south doubled their sales. In 2020 they shifted to online ordering and curbside within a day of closing, gave every customer a free cookie, lost a quarter of their sales and, Shaun Breese told Phoenix New Times, never let a single employee go. By then they had spent a decade thinking about a second store and two years looking for the site.
They chose it in January 2023 and announced it that June: a Scottsdale address that would serve the city, northeast Phoenix and the East Valley, in a commercial strip rather than a neighborhood, across from a major hospital. “When you know, you just know,” Shaun said. The fall 2023 target slipped, as bakery build-outs do, and the shop opened in early 2024. By then Urban Cookies was, in Phoenix New Times’ phrase, a beloved Phoenix bakery opening its first branch, which is a different thing from a Scottsdale bakery, and it explains the location. Pima Crossings is a freeway corner, not a village; it was chosen for the drive-up customer, and the drive-up customer came.
Scottsdale’s own dessert economy has mostly been resort pastry and chains, with a few independents, and the Shea Corridor in particular has been better supplied with medical offices than with bakeries. Urban Cookies filled a gap in the 2020s that nobody had noticed until it was filled. Its competition is the grocery bakery, the cookie chains along Scottsdale Road, and nostalgia for the Phoenix store.
Honest assessment: the cookies and cupcakes are as good as the reputation, the owners are the real thing, and the Scottsdale shop is a faithful copy of the original with a smaller case. The limits are the room, which is a former Subway and looks it, the Sunday closure, and prices you cannot see until you are at the counter. Go for a box, not a visit, and order it the night before.