Specialty Food Magazine is the leading publication for retailers, manufacturers and foodservice professionals in the specialty food trade. It provides news, trends and business-building insights that help readers keep their businesses competitive.
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No Artificial Anything WHY AREN'T ALL STONED WHEAT CRACKERS ALL-NATURAL? Pachyderms and prosperity. "We started with a small online pres- ence in the winter of 2009, making cookies in the basement of my house," she says. The following spring, she turned her carriage house into a commercial bakery and began to bake for wholesale while growing her offerings. Among them was the Pachyderm Pack shortbread line, made with premium Plugrá butter, European and Valrhona chocolate, and other quality ingredients, in flavors such as Chocolate Chipotle and Rosemary Sesame, the latter a 2012 sofi Silver Finalist. The top-selling treats are hand-stamped with Springerle molds to create intricate detail. A strong contender to take the top-selling lead is the Shnecken, an "extra-ooey-gooey yeast bread with lots of buttery caramel that's like a cinnamon bun on steroids," Shannon says. This year, it became a sofi Silver Finalist for Outstanding New Product. In August Shannon and her staff of 12 moved into a 14,500-square-foot historic church–turned–retail bakery and pro- duction facility. The property is being renovated for a retail bakery dessert bar that will offer baked goods and cocktails and host bak- ing classes and private events. New machinery will help the team make tens of thousands of cookies an hour—skyrocketing from the just 300 per hour made today. The company's success has been anything but modest. From year one's $9,000 in sales, Queen City Cookies is now making six figures, Shannon reveals. We've always believed, if you want a cracker good enough to eat out of the box, it has to be all-natural. So ours are always: 2 Vegan verified 2 Non-GMO certified 2 Free of saturated fats and trans fats In Bite-Size and our new Long Box, Mariner are all-natural Stoned Wheat Crackers as they should be. TRY THEM YOURSELF. Phone 800-545-4538 for a sample. Success begets support. Thanks to its exponential growth, Queen City Cookies has been able to support numerous charitable orga- nizations and events, includ- ing Women Helping Women, MS Accelerated Cure Project, Cincinnati Northside Urban Redevelopment Corporation and Clifton Cultural Arts Center. The company has also part- Queen City Cookies creates special- edition cookies for Winter Fancy Food Show Booth 1270 26 ❘ SPECIALTY FOOD MAGAZINE ❘ specialtyfood.com nered with several groups to cre- ate special-edition cookies for fundraising. "We created the iced shortbread cookie for Horses and Hope, a nonprofit founded by Jane Beshear, first lady of Kentucky, to increase breast cancer awareness among the Kentucky horse indus- try," Shannon says. For Happen Inc., a local group that provides free art classes to youth, Queen City created a series of edible- art cookies designed by children. And the company donates 100 percent of profits from sales of its fundraising, such as an iced shortbread cookie for Horses and Hope to increase breast cancer awareness, and edible-art cookies designed by children for Happen Inc., which provides free art classes to youth.