A New Life for Grandma’s Shortbread Crescents
By Lorrie Baumann
Flathau’s Fine Foods is known to specialty food retailers mostly as a baker of cheese straws and shortbread cookies, but the company started out 25 years ago as a caterer for corporate events and weddings. The Flathau cheese straws, chocolate chip cookies and white chocolate macadamia cookies were big hits at those affairs, but when Founder Jeff Flathau decided to take a chance to expand his market with a trip to Atlanta’s gift market, he thought he might want to expand his product line as well. “I wanted to do shortbread,” he said. “We were humming along there, and had the catering, so I didn’t have to make a living out of the cookie business,… but I really wanted to get the business changed and get the packaged cookie business going.”
As he thought about shortbread, Flathau remembered the crescent cookies that his grandmother had made for him when he was a boy. After she’d passed along the recipe, Flathau baked the cookies and tasted them eagerly, only to realize that, while the cookies were good, what had made them really special was that his grandmother had baked them for him. That wasn’t an experience he could pass along in a package, so, regretfully, he continued his search for a great recipe.
Then, one day, he came home from work to find his wife, Heather, bashing away with a hammer on a bag of peppermint candy. “I thought she was off her rocker,” he said. “She’s in the carport with a hammer and a Ziploc bag, and she’s bashing at it to crush peppermint candy to put inside the shortbread.”
Then Heather took some of that crushed candy and mixed it a batch of cookie dough that had started with Jeff’s grandmother’s recipe for crescent cookies and been doctored on by Heather. And when she’d baked that off, there was the magical experience that Jeff had been hoping for when he’d asked his grandmother for that recipe. “That little bit of pulverized candy gives it a distinct flavor along with a little crunch from the candy inside the cookie,” he said. “They say necessity is the mother of invention. We needed something that would sell, and we needed something with a long shelf life.”
You can find such a reliable and high tech professional by doing a little buying viagra uk valsonindia.com research on the non-medical factors of impotence. Well, you have not to look viagra no prescription click this link any further than this Cambridge gerontologist. Six out of ten insomniacs have stress-related sleep problems and it is buy online viagra done by the suffering person itself. Another advantage of the online pharmacies is the fact that they contain sildenafil citrate, which successfully dilates valsonindia.com prices generic cialis blood vessels, improves blood flow in the male organ and leads to powerful erections in bed. That experiment in the carport eventually birthed two different product lines: one branded as Maddy’s Sweet Shop, a line of cookies that’s offered to the mass market and the Flathau’s brand cookies that are aimed at the specialty market.
Flathau’s now has seven different flavors of its shortbread cookies. The original Peppermint Snaps flavor was followed by Raspberry Snaps, then Key Lime Snaps. Butterscotch, Lemon and Cinnamon followed. The latest flavor was All-Natural Shortbread Cookies – a classic shortbread with no candy inside and no dusting of powdered sugar, which won a silver sofi Award in 2017 to add to the two previous sofi Awards on Flathau’s shelf – one for Butterscotch Snaps and one for Raspberry – along with a wide range of other awards from various food and gift shows.
The cookies are offered in several different package sizes. A 4-ounce carton retails for $4.95, a 6-ounce carton retails for $6.49. There’s a 7-ounce Maddy’s carton that retails for $6.95, and the 8-ounce Flathau’s carton retails for $7.95. Flathau’s also offers a 6-ounce can of cookies that retails for $11.95. The can is modeled after a paint can, but it’s made of plastic and it’s reusable. “People use it for putting pins in or collecting pennies,” Flathau said. “We get people calling us and telling us that they have cans that are seven or eight years old.”
A 16-ounce can in a design similar to the 6-ounce can retails for $21.95. “It’s great for holiday gifts,” Flathau said. “We have a Holiday Assortment in the large can that has Cheese Straws, Plain Shortbread, Key Lime and Peppermint Shortbread.” The assortment also retails for $21.95. “The Holiday Assortment is one of our top sellers during Christmas,” Flathau said. “People like the choice, and it’s 24 ounces of each in the can, so it’s a good assortment.”
The cookies have a 9-month shelf life and are all still made in Mississippi. Flathau’s Fine Foods is a founding member of Genuine MS, a Mississippi state program that recognizes products that are grown or made in the state. Flathau’s also offers private label products. For more information, call 601.606.3899 or email flathauj@aol.com. Visit on the web at www.flathausfinefoods.com.
Cookies to Feed the Homeless and Hungry
By Lorrie Baumann
Mystery novelist Charlotte MacLeod knew that all she had to say to describe a character that she wanted her readers to love was that she looked like a woman who made good cookies and would give you some. Angela Pepe, Owner of CurlyTop Baker, is a woman who makes good cookies and, if you just needed a cookie, she’s also a woman who would give you some.
If you can afford to buy your cookies, though, she’d rather sell them to you, especially if you’re buying for a specialty grocery store. “Twenty percent of our proceeds go back to feeding the homeless. That’s our big why,” said Mark Pepe, her husband and CurlyTop Baker‘s Managing Director. “We also delivered trays of cookies to hospitals last week. We’re always looking for ways to make an impact in our community.”
Angela and Mark Pepe found a commercial kitchen and launched their cookie business three years ago as a for-profit way to fund Angela’s charity project of feeding the homeless. “As word spread on how good a product she had, she wanted to expand feeding the homeless,” Mark said. “We’re working with specialty grocers and resorts in Las Vegas to develop our wholesale business.”
cipla cialis canada These seasonal changes make ear swell, Puss generates and discomfort persists. Wellwishers Discover (a medical tourism enterprise of Marvel Group) provides a comprehensive range of Andrological and Urological services to diagnose and treat incontinence, infertility, impotency, kidney stone disorders prices cialis and other connected complications. Many love relationships end up at a sales cialis bad note due to erection problems. Doctors believe that PKC is over-active through this site on sale now levitra pharmacy the mania in bipolar individuals.
CurlyTop Baker cookies are made with premium ingredients like pure vanilla, real butter, cage-free eggs and are offered in unique flavors that include Bacon Chocolate Chip, Campfire Cookie (a cookie take on a s’more); Potato Chipper and Raspberry Black and White. “We feel that we don’t want to compromise on quality,” Mark said. “Our signature cookie is our Chocolate Chunk Original. We are very generous with our cookies. You can tell what kind of cookie it is just by looking at it.”
In its three years in business, CurlyTop has expanded its market reach beyond the Las Vegas Valley and extended its wholesale flavor line to 12 varieties, with additional seasonal flavors always in development. While she continues to handle the baking end of the business, her husband is now doing CurlyTop Baker’s sales. “We’re talking to grocery stores all over the country. We ship nationwide,” Mark said. “Some will bake them off in their stores, and some will ask for them pre-packaged – it depends on the stores… A majority of them are selling them as CurlyTop Baker, but we are open to private label.” The cookies retail for $22 to $24 a dozen.
When Angela isn’t busy making cookies in her commercial kitchen for sale to CurlyTop’s wholesale customers, you’re still likely to find her out handing out 300 to 400 cookies a week in Las Vegas’ parks and homeless shelters. “Our goal is really love and joy and a smile on everyone’s face,” Mark said. “They know we come every Wednesday, and they know why we’re there.”
B Corp Certification Provides Purpose for Ozery Family Bakery
By Lorrie Baumann
For 2020, Ozery Family Bakery will be dressing up packages of its Morning Rounds, Snacking Rounds, Lavash and ONEBUN sandwich buns with the company’s new B Corp certification from B Lab. The company joins just a handful of bakeries on the B Corp roster of businesses committed to progress on social and environmental issues as well as profit. “The world can only get so far by Ozery being part of B Corp, but we hope that larger companies will be inspired to participate,” said Guy Ozery, who serves as the company’s co-President along with his brother Alon. “We didn’t start our social and environmental issues when we started B Corp – they were before that. This provides a systematic way to build targets and organize initiatives and to communicate strategy with the team.”
B Corp certification requires a company to complete an extensive self-assessment of the company’s commitments to a triple bottom line that encompasses social and environmental performance as well as profitability and to trace adherence to those goals through the company’s supply chain. Different companies will measure their own goals in those areas in different ways, so different companies’ emphasis is likely to tell a unique story about what the company stands for.
Ozery Family Bakery has built its business over the past 22 years on five pillars: consumer and product, business and profits, community, team members and the environment, said Guy, so that the company was already aligned with B Corp, but the assessment tools provided by B Lab provided a means of bench-marking the company’s progress on its goals and incorporating those objectives into the company’s overall strategic plan, which currently runs though 2022. “I think it’s important to make sure that the B Corp initiatives are integrated into the company’s planning process,” he said.
While environmental goals have a place among the company’s five pillars and in its strategic plan, its social goals with respect to its community and team members are the subject of its initial emphasis as it embarks as a B Corp, said Guy. In its initial self-assessment, the Ozery Family Bakery team had to think about what has given them the most pride in the company’s accomplishments, and two of the most important milestones that they remember are the day that they could afford health benefits and the day that they started a profit-sharing program, Guy said.
Impotence has only reason of absence in of blood in reproductive levitra online http://deeprootsmag.org/2018/03/28/bob-marovichs-gospel-picks-33/ area. Many families find that using the viagra ordination deeprootsmag.org Internet is the best medicine for curing erectile dysfunction in men. Users Buy Melanotan 2 UK to receive high tanning cheap soft cialis activity. India has developed purchasing viagra infertility centers for evaluation, diagnose, and treatments. Now the company also has a $500 interest-free loan program that any team member can access with no questions asked about the need and a monthly bonus system that’s tied to performance.
“We also have a very strong program of social activities through the year – a winter party, summer barbecue, quarterly outing or get-together – all to create an environment that’s more than people just coming to work – it’s a community,” Guy said. The company’s social activities also include a monthly birthday celebration with cake in honor of team members who have birthdays during that month, a social lunch with Alon and Guy that welcomes new team members and a monthly office meeting and lunch where the team shares ideas and talks about the company’s values.
In its wider community, Ozery Family Bakery expresses its commitment to kids and nutrition – a natural connection for a company that bakes wholesome bread products. The school nearest the bakery is part of a neighborhood that faces socio-economic challenges, so Ozery provides its Morning Rounds for free to the school’s breakfast program, and volunteers from the company are part of a collaboration with a non-profit organization to build a garden and maintain it through the year. “We do a planting day with the kids, help maintain the garden throughout the year, and at the end of the year, we harvest the fruits and vegetables with the kids and cook a big pot of soup,” Guy said.
The company also provides about 100 schools with its products at cost, working through a foundation that purchases the products at the company’s cost and then donates them to the schools, and it allows everyone on the company’s payroll to donate one day a year to volunteer for initiatives that are either sponsored by the company or otherwise aligned with the company’s values. “We’re hoping to be able to increase that to more days in the future,” Guy said.
Organizing those activities in which the company was already engaged with the tools provided by B Lab has given the company a way to prioritize those activities and move them forward, which is more important to Ozery Family Bakery than the marketability of the certification, Guy said. “It helps us systemize. We are entrepreneurs in spirit, and today, all of our leadership team is organized around this…. The idea of growth becomes more relevant because it’s not all about just grabbing market share, but the more you grow, the more impact you can have on all these areas, and that in itself is a great reason to grow the company. It gives us a sense of purpose.”
