Baking & Snack - July 2016 - 32

ELLISON BAKERY

A dip into an Ellison Bakery brand
With the departure of its Archway Cookies business, Ellison
Bakery decided to try its hand at filling the gap in the highend, soft cookie marketplace. With 50 years of experience,
the company launched its own Ellison Bakery brand.
"Archway was a great product line," said Todd Wallin,
president, Ellison Bakery. "They had a strong following, so
we decided to launch a similar product to get back into that
marketplace."
While the company's experience baking such cookies
paid off in product quality, the Ellison Bakery brand ended
up being a tough sell. "We had phenomenal products that
we came out with, but no one knew who Ellison Bakery
was," Mr. Wallin explained.
Without that nationally marketed brand name or distribution system in place, the company discovered that
launching its own brand would take more investment than
it deemed profitable. When Lance, Inc. (now Snyder'sLance), bought the Archway brand and relaunched the
product, that made Ellison cookies an even tougher sell.
Ellison's managers decided it more prudent to regroup
and pursue opportunities in the private-label market. Here,
Ellison could focus on what it did best - baking cookies in
a flexible production setting - without managing distribution or developing a brand.
"There are a lot of great people out there who are looking for private-label products, and they want good products to take to their customers," Mr. Wallin said. "That's
where we excel."

To keep up with this burgeoning side business, Ellison
Bakery expanded its facility in 2006. However, by 2008,
Archway Cookies, which had been sold and its contract with Ellison renegotiated several times, was gone.
By that time, Archway had already shrunk to 15% of
Ellison's volume. Ellison grew with its new marketplace's
needs and paved new paths for additional expansion.
"Over the years, we have evolved from only producing
retail branded 10- to 11-oz overwrapped packaged cookies for grocery stores to having more than 100 SKUs serving the retail private-label market, foodservice segments
and other industrial manufacturers making ice cream,
pies and confectionery products," Mr. Wallin said.
With such a diverse product line, Ellison Bakery's capabilities enable the business to be game to try anything
- as long as it starts out as a cookie.

Product development
Product innovation has become a foundational pillar of
Ellison's business.
"One of the things that we do well, and have since we
expanded our business in the 1980s, is we work with our
customers and ask, 'What do you want to bring to the
marketplace, and how can we provide that?' " Mr. Wallin
explained. "We start with a cookie-based product and
find out how we can provide what they're looking for
from a cookie-based product."
R&D runs the gamut at Ellison. Sometimes, a cusThe bakery's newest mixer can output 2,400 lb of dough, which transfers into a
rotary moulder or wire-cut depositor via trough.
Vito Palmisano

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