Baking & Snack - September 2015 - 53

OPERATIONS
Cheryl's

Celebrate
As Cheryl's adapts to growth, the stewards of the brand's legacy safeguard
what made the dessert and gift business delicious in the first place.
by Charlotte Atchley
It's one thing to make a cookie that takes people back to
grandmother's kitchen, but turn that treat into a beautiful gift and a bakery becomes a part of its consumers'
celebrations. That's been the vision of Cheryl's for more
than 30 years. The Westerville, OH-based company,
founded in 1981 by Cheryl Krueger, prides itself on
transforming its cookies and desserts into packaged gifts
for any and all occasions.
"Cheryl, because she had such vision as a merchant,
saw that it wasn't really enough to sell delicious cookies in a bag over the counter," said Elisabeth Allwein,
product development director. "From the very first, she
wanted to make them into beautiful gifts."
Today, Cheryl's gifting business has its own dedicated
space, a warehouse of 175,000 sq ft populated with people hand-packing cookies and other desserts. "We started out very small," said Sheila Howell, vice-president,
marketing, Cheryl's. "The catalog is where we really
started to grow nationally."
This focus on gifts caught the attention of Carle Place,
NY-based 1-800-Flowers.com, which acquired Cheryl's
in 2005. With the support of a company of this size and
resources, Cheryl's gained even more exposure and had
the capital to take this regional operation to the next
level with major expansions and new equipment to keep
up with its growth.

Foray into automation
Cheryl's move toward automation did not start with
1-800-Flowers.com influence, though the acquisition

has given the cookie company the ability to make substantial leaps.
In the beginning, Cheryl's was predominantly a
manual operation. Employees scooped dough and cut
out round sugar cookies from sheets by hand. Stories
are told of Ms. Krueger's brother chopping chunks off a
large chocolate block by hand to get pieces big enough to
suit Ms. Krueger's vision.
As demand for the cookies and gifts rose - fueled by
the company's stint on airlines and its now-iconic catalog - the need arose for some automation, but Cheryl's
did not rush into it. They started gradually. "We would
start with whatever used piece of equipment we could afford, buy it, and use it and use it and use it," Ms. Allwein
said. "We wanted to grow the business and invest in the
new equipment in a really sound way."
Even though Ms. Krueger has retired and Cheryl's has
the financial support of 1-800-Flowers.com to justify
more updated equipment purchases, it's still important
for those stewards of the business to maintain the company's vision. They don't want to automate for the sake
of automation.
"Equipment that maintains or improves the quality
and also is more efficient - those are the things we're
looking for," Ms. Allwein explained. "If the quality isn't
maintained or improved, then that piece of equipment
isn't coming in here."
For example, the company had a brief experiment
with a robotic frosting system. "We had some robotic
arms, but it was hilarious because the cookies would

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