Famed drummer and musician Ralph Rolle owns Soul Snacks Cookies, a Black-owned cookie shop in the Bronx, New York. For nearly 30 years, he has provided customers with various sweet treats and continues to give back to the community that raised him.
Rolle spoke with News 12 about growing up in the Bronx River Houses and how he started baking dessert items before launching Soul Snacks Cookies in 1996.
“I was just a shy kid that wanted to meet girls, and I didn’t have any swag like my friends, so I would bake cookies and give them. It worked,” he told the outlet.
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Rolle added, “When I first started, it was just order by order to friends. And then it got so busy that we had to move out of the space we were in to a bigger space, and that’s how we ended up here.”
In 2012, he relocated his kitchen to East 134th Street and has continued delighting customers with his baked goods.
Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson recently stopped by to try some of Rolle’s cookies, and it’s safe to say she enjoyed it.
“I was like, ‘Let me taste these cookies,’ and oh, my God, the coconut custard…” Gibson raved.
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Soul Snacks Cookies offers nearly 20 flavors, and Rolle, known as the “Cookie Man” in the Bronx, said he gained inspiration from his late mother, Rose, and his grandmother, Leola, as they taught him to dream big and give back to his community, according to PIX 11.
“I take her message of community and family, and move that, and pay it forward,” Rolle said of his mother to the outlet.
