It has become a pattern. Students from Washington and St. Louis universities start calling in. Bar patrons in the Delmar Loop wander through the door. Sweet-toothed couch potatoes with a craving for something buttery and warm pick up the phone.

“It starts around 9 p.m.,” says Tamika Moore. “We call it cookie-emergency hour.”

Moore and her partner in life and business, Ernest Dixon, had a simple idea: Bake fresh, made-to-order cookies, and then — most importantly, perhaps — deliver them right to peoples’ doors. (With milk if requested.)

They launched their business, Dough to Door, last August on a cross street off the Delmar Loop, at first walking up and down Delmar Boulevard giving samples. Soon the delivery orders started coming. Now the business bakes and sells “thousands of dozens” of cookies a month, Moore says, many in the critical “cookie-emergency” window between 9 p.m and 2 a.m.

“Late-night is big for us,” Dixon said. “We see some weird situations. That’s the fun part.”

The Dough to Door business model strikes directly at the butter-loving heart of anyone who has ever been enveloped by the smell of baking cookies — and needs one right away. The “munchie” market segment — late-night revelers who want a little something after their indulgences — was actually a formal target identified in the company’s business plan.

“It’s a legitimate marketing category,” Dixon said. “The munchie crowd generates a need based on something else they’re doing.”

But the strategy also taps into generational expectations and the American consumer’s growing need for getting what they want, when they want it. The custom delivery market, first pioneered by Domino’s Pizza in the 1980s, has surged in recent years, and now delivery options go well beyond pizza.

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