If this store’s fresh-baked cookies were thick with chunks of chocolate, another’s were thin with sweet miniature chips. If one Hy-Vee’s cookies were sweet and gooey, the cookies at a Hy-Vee on the other side of town were crispy or fluffy.
The wide range of choices left customers unsure that the cookies they loved from their Hy-Vee would taste the same as those from any of the other 194 stores with bakeries. That also meant there was no way to market the popular bakery item companywide.
So two years ago, Tony Byington, assistant vice president, bakery operations, and the company’s six bakery supervisors began searching for a good-tasting, everyday cookie that customers could find in every corner of Hy-Vee land.
On March 20, the boxes hit the shelves.
“This is the right thing to do for customers company-wide,” says Byington.
Yes, there were delicious cookies being made throughout the company, he said. But there was always an asterisk—an exception to the norm here and there. “This new program allows us to definitively say you can find the same, quality cookies in every Hy-Vee, not just some Hy-Vees.”
The search
manufacturingThe quest was to find a recipe that Hy-Vee bakeries would not only be proud to bake and sell, but also would keep production costs in check.
The search team left no stone unturned. They contacted every single cookie supplier and asked for their best cookie. They scoured the web for award-winning recipes and attended numerous bakery conferences—tasting, smelling and eye-balling each cookie along the way.
Finally, the team came up with three formulas everyone could agree on.
“All of our information-gathering gave us the best of formulas to narrow down,” Byington says. “We were confident that the balance of our opinions would yield the three very best.”
The Consumer Panel
But taste is subjective. Would the team’s choices appeal to customers?
To find out, Hy-Vee turned to the Nutrition and Wellness Research Center at Iowa State University. The center’s Sensory Evaluation Unit, run by Dr. Ken Prusa, does consumer testing to evaluate products.
“The consumer panels are not meant to come back with unanimous results,” Prusa says. “But it does produce what products will be most appreciated by a majority of Hy-Vee’s customers.”
The panel, made up of 100 people living within a 30-mile radius of Ames, was designed to mirror Hy-Vee’s primary shoppers. The panelists would taste each cookie in an isolated booth and answer a questionnaire created by the bakery team.
Most importantly, all the panelists—65 females and 35 males from a range of age groups, upbringings and financial backgrounds—considered themselves cookie eaters, ensuring that people who actually eat cookies would rate the samples.
panelistsThe first cookie tested was chocolate chip. The bakery team selected two outside cookie formulas to go up against the cookie dough produced at Hy-Vee’s Bakery Manufacturing plant at the time.
The panelists’ answers helped Byington and his team figure out which formulas had majority consensus in everything from chewiness to the amount of chocolate chips. The results, tabulated by Dr. Prusa’s team, and the panelists’ candid feedback showed that Hy-Vee’s cookies weren’t cutting it.
“Most customers did not describe the dough we were using at the time as great and delicious. We want a cookie program that most describe as delicious,” Byington says.
Back to Bakery Manufacturing
In a nondescript building surrounded by train tracks, recycling centers and roads mostly travelled by semi-trucks, is Dave Perkins’ office at Hy-Vee Bakery Manufacturing.
For 14 years he’s overseen the creation of cookies, cakes, cupcakes and other mass-produced treats that were distributed and sold at Hy-Vee stores all over the Midwest. With the launch of the new program, the plant’s only focus now is cookies and cupcakes.
The dough for Hy-Vee’s new cookie program, which includes 15 varieties, is mixed and distributed exclusively at Bakery Manufacturing. To meet the estimated demand, a new blast freezer, cookie depositor and other equipment were installed, tripling the plant’s capacity.
“This is the biggest change I’ve seen at Bakery Manufacturing,” Perkins says.
But before taking on cookie production, they needed a cookie to produce.
Byington, armed with an ingredient list from the dough that appealed to a majority of ISU’s taste-testers, handed Perkins and his team their assignment: experiment with the ingredients until the same taste and quality cookie can be produced on a massive scale.
The bakers mixed together dozens of doughs and baked thousands of cookies. They studied every ingredient, from the shortening to the sugar to the butter to the add-ons, such as chocolate chips. They tweaked and tinkered with the amount of ingredients and the settings on their machines.
If a dough was too thick, they added an egg or water. If the dough was too dry, another adjustment was made.
“We went through a lot of batches and a lot of testing,” Perkins says.
Ghirardelli chocolate chips
Throughout the process, the focus was always on quality.
“We want to get to the point where our standards are so high [our competition] wonders how Hy-Vee does it. We’ll let them be cheap. We’ll have the quality,” Byington says.
Enter Ghirardelli.
A chocolate chip cookie is only as good as its chocolate chips. So Byington turned to one of America’s proudest makers of chocolate.
“Ghirardelli is a premium chocolate,” Byington says. “When you see it and taste it, you know it is quality.”
The boxes are ready
In August 2012, Byington returned to Iowa State with the Ghirardelli-laden chocolate chip cookie. This time the consumer panel results were overwhelmingly positive. From there, Hy-Vee’s other top sellers—M&M, peanut butter, sugar, snicker doodle and oatmeal raisin—were created and they tested strong as well.
The new line of cookies launched last week, packaged in a sustainable cardboard box with a peekaboo window so customers are tempted by ingredients such as the Ghirardelli chips, the plump raisins, the M&Ms and the Reece’s pieces.
“We’ve really improved the quality of the overall cookie program by leaps and bounds,” Perkins says. “I think it’s really going to make a big difference.”
The new program allows Hy-Vee to market cookies company-wide and Bakery Manufacturing, which previously served 40 percent of Hy-Vee stores, will see an increase in its sales as well.
Dave Kelderman, bakery manager at Urbandale, says the new program will free up bakers and bakery managers to focus on displaying and selling rather than mixing dough. And, most importantly, the new cookies taste great, too.
After all, that was the mission.
Mission accomplished.
The 15 varieties in Hy-Vee’s new line of cookies, which will be produced by Bakery Manufacturing, are:
•Chocolate Chip, made with Ghirardelli chocolate chips
•M&M
•Oatmeal Raisin
•Peanut Butter
•Homestyle Brownie, made with Ghirardelli chocolate
•Sugar
•Snicker Doodle
•Monster, made with Ghirardelli chocolate chips and M&Ms
•English Toffee
•Peanut Butter, with Reese’s Pieces
•Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip, with Ghirardelli
•Oatmeal Chocolate Chip, with Ghirardelli
•Oatmeal
•Molasses
•Double Chocolate, made with Ghirardelli chocolate chips and M&Ms
Photo caption: Steve McBee, a baker at Bakery Manufacturing, adds Ghirardelli chocolate chips to a batch of Hy-Vee’s new chocolate chip cookies. One batch produces about 800 cookies and the team at Bakery Manufacturing produces around 30 batches a day. Last year Hy-Vee bakeries sold about 1.8 million dozens of cookies. With the launch of the new cookie the bakery team is projecting to sell 3.8 million dozens.
Source: Hy-Vee
