Workers man four production lines in three, eight-hour shifts during the week. They produce about 30 million pounds of cookies per year. Workers process 1.5 million pounds of flour per month into tasty treats using about 45 different recipes. The re-tooled facility will increase production from the current level of about 1,200 pounds of cookies an hour to a capacity of 1,800 to 2,000 pounds. The dough is mixed in huge vats and trundled over to bins that sit at one end of a long conveyer belt.
Rollers press the cookie dough into the proper shape for the flavor being produced.
Round, square, big or little, the presses turn out piles of dough onto the belt that carries them into the ovens where they are baked. From the ovens the belt whisks the cookies through a cooling area and on to be sorted, filled with sweet creams, iced and then stacked in neat rows. Employees in clean white uniforms and hairnets line up the cookies in neat rows to be packaged. They range from little, cream-filled lemon, vanilla, peanut butter or banana sandwiches to animal cookies, fig bars, sugar cookies and chocolate chip. For bigger snackers, a 12-ounce chocolate chunk or iced oatmeal confection might satisfy cookie cravings.