Baking&Snack - June 2013 - 126

NEW PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT

Buono Dolce
La Panzanella rolls out artisan Dolcetini cookies that complement its popular line
of Croccantini specialty crackers.

When Paul Pigott purchased Hannah’s Delights three
years ago, he thought he had a winner with the line of
indulgent, light, bite-sized cookies. Unfortunately, with
the exception of Mr. Pigott and a small loyal following
that purchased the shortbread-style cookies in specialty
stores throughout the Northwest, nobody in the retail
trade knew who or what Hannah and her cookies were.
“When we pitched Hannah last year, we simply got no
traction,” recalled Mr. Pigott, president of La Panzanella
Artisanal Foods, the Tukwila, WA-based producer of
upscale specialty crackers.
At the Fancy Food show in January, the shortbread
cookies made their debut under the La Panzanella
brand, and the reaction from current and potential customers was pleasantly different. “A lot of people came
up to us and said, ‘We had no idea you sold cookies,’
and many of them were the same people we tried selling them to under the Hannah brand, when we got nowhere,” Mr. Pigott said. “My gosh, I wish I knew about
that a year ago.”
Today, the 1/3-oz eye-drop-shaped cookies have been
renamed Dolcetini. “Dolce is short for dessert in Italian,
and ‘tini’ means small,” Mr. Pigott explained. “They’re
like a little tiny dessert.”
The artisanal cookies are positioned as sweet counterparts to La Panzanella’s established line of savory

Croccantini and mini-Croccantini flatbread crackers.
Dolcetini come in Meyer Lemon, Snickerdoodle,
Chocolate Chip, Key Lime, Vanilla Snowball and
Peppermint varieties and are sold in 10-oz plastic tubs
that retail for $5.99 in supermarket in-store bakeries.
The products will be distributed nationally through the
company’s existing network of independent distributors.
Initially, the most requested varieties are Meyer
Lemon, which is higher quality with a less tart flavor
than conventional lemon, and Snickerdoodle followed by Chocolate Chip. Mr. Pigott said the seasonal
Snowball item has recently gained traction with some
retailers, and he expected Key Lime to become a southern regional item while Peppermint will be sold only
during the Christmas holiday season. All products,
except the crispy chocolate chip variety, are coated in
powdered sugar.
To improve shelf life and lower the package’s suggested retail price, La Panzanella reformulated the cookies
with a dab of palm oil from renewable resources instead
of the butter used in the past. The company also added
natural butter flavoring, and in a blind taste test, the reformulated treat, which has a one-year shelf life, graded
slightly higher than the original cookie.
“We wanted to maintain a product that is all-natural,”
Mr. Pigott noted. “We didn’t want to roll them out at a
price point that’s excessively high. They’re still not inexpensive, but it’s an artisanal product. It’s a specialty
product with a mid-level price.”
— Dan Malovany

•

La Panzanella’s cookies are
sold in 10-oz plastic tubs that
retail for $5.99 in supermarket in-store bakeries.
La Panzanella Artisanal Foods

126

/ Baking & Snack / June 2013

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