- Voortman Cookies
Voortman Cookies Limited is a Canadian company specializing in the production and sale of cookies. Based in
Burlington, Ontario , its cookies may be found in supermarkets across Canada and theUnited States .Voortman Cookies is affiliated with
Appleby Transport Limited, a Canadian shipping company.History
Voortman Cookies Ltd. was founded by brothers William and Harry Voortman, who emigrated to Canada from their hometown of
Hellendoorn ,Netherlands , in1948 , with their father, who had operated a bread bakery there. In1951 , they founded their first bakery in Hamilton, Ontario in a small, rented backroom of a house on Wilson and Elgin streets. It would be five years of long days baking and delivering their products before the brothers got their first real break into the retail trade when,in 1956, a major grocery chain agreed to give the Voortman Cookies shelf space. In 1957, the Voortman brothers moved to Enfield Road in Burlington where they built a facility that would eventually employ over twenty people. Although by then their main product was cookies the brothers coninued to bake pumpernickel and honeycake, mainly for southern Ontario's growing Dutch immigrant population.In 1961 Voortman Cookies moved to its first custom-built, production-line bakery on King Road -less than a mile from its Enfield Road facility. This plant would serve the company until 1975, at which time Voortman Cookies would move to its present day facility on the Queen Elizabeth Way and Appleby Line in East Burlington.
Today, Voortman Cookies makes over 60 unique varieties of cookies, including an extensive line of sugar-free and low sugar products. The Burlington plant remains the sole production facility for the Voortman brand. Voortman Cookies presently employs over 400 full-time workers in their production facility, and their cookies are distributed throughout North America by a network of over 450 independent distributors.
In
2003 , Voortman Cookies gained media attention when president Harry Voortman announced that as ofApril 5 ,2004 , no trans fats would be used in the production of its cookies. This made Voortman Cookies one of the first food companies to move away from the use of harmful trans-fats in retail food products.External links
* [http://www.voortman.com/ Official website]
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