The founder of David's Cookies, David Lieberman, died of a heart attack at age 75 on Thursday in a Mount Kisco, New York hospital, according to his wife Susan.
Lieberman was also being treated for myelofibrosis, a type of blood cancer, at the time of his death. The hospital was near his home in Katonah.
Lieberman founded David's Cookies in 1979 after getting a law degree and becoming a chef. He was the first baker in many decades to create chocolate chunk cookies by using chopped Swiss dark chocolate instead of chocolate chips, which were created in 1938 by Nestle.
Lieberman abandoned a law career to work in the kitchen at Troisgros in France, becoming the first American to work there.
“He was always trying to do something that no one else thought of,” his younger brother, William Liederman, said about his cooking.
Lieberman created a line of sauces that chefs could use instead of bullion in cooking, but while he was marketing those products, he visited a cookie store in San Francisco and was underwhelmed.
He joined the trend of opening cookie shops with his first David's Cookies store in Manhattan and eventually grew the brand to 100 stores around the U.S. and in Japan, making tens of millions of dollars annually.
He sold a variety of cookie types along with bread and other baked products until he sold the chain to Fairfield Foods in New Jersey in 2015 and retired.
He eventually decided David's Cookies no longer met his standards and was thinking of getting back into the cookie business at the time of his death.
But even as he built a veritable cookie empire, he also continued his work as a chef and owned several restaurants in New York City.
Lieberman struggled with his weight and was told by his doctor to lose weight if he wanted to live to see his grandchildren.
In 1990, he wrote a weight loss book but did not find the success he needed that way.
He gave up drinking despite being a wine connoisseur and did live to see two grandchildren.
His name will live on through the cookie company he founded and through other cooking ventures and restaurants.
