Peggy Shannon raises standards in cookie design, flavours

Queen City Cookies, LLC is an artisan cookie company based in Cincinnati, Ohio. Its founder Peggy Shannon is a life-long baker and artist who put up the cookie shop as a way to offer consumers beautiful and delicious baked goods that are not like any other in looks and taste. According to one customer, images of these cookies fail to show how charming they truly are.
What make the cookies unique are the vintage 14th century German-style moulds that Ms Shannon and her artisan bakers use and the decorative piping that they do by hand. Ms Shannon has a collection of more than 500 moulds from all over the world, including the Springerie moulds which provide the elaborate designs on her round and rectangle shortbread cookies.
 
Aside from the old German and Austrian artisan patterns, there are cookies moulded in the shape of elephants. On top of looking delectable, the cookies are available in innovative flavours, some of which may be an acquired taste. As an experienced baker, Ms Shannon doesn’t stop at common flavours like chocolate, which they have, but also experiments on mixing and matching those that might be new and therefore exciting to the palate, like smokey-flavoured cookies or herbed cookies which can go well with cheese.

Stringent on ingredients
The cookies are created from scratch and are baked in batches to ensure consistency and quality. They are made with natural, preservative-free ingredients like premium Plugrá butter, European and Valrhona chocolate, Penzeys spices, organic lemons, and all natural flavor essences as well as unbleached flour. There are no artificial ingredients. The crispy and buttery shortbread cookies can be made according to each client’s personal taste or custom-designed for special occasions, including birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, baby showers and corporate events.
 
To match the elegant look of the cookies, the packaging is equally attractive. Gift packages partner the cookies with cards that tell fictional stories of the life of Queen City’s elephant or display images and inspirational messages. The cards are meant to be kept long after the cookies have been consumed – and the company says they are.

The cookie realm expands; so do the challenges
These distinctive and innovative cookies have helped Ms Shannon grow her small boutique bakery into a larger wholesale business. Whilst production has successfully been scaled up to satisfy the demands of customers in Cincinnati, New York, Kentucky, and other parts of the country, looking for better packaging has been a greater challenge. The expansion to wholesale has added new levels of complexity, including extending the shelf life of the products and protecting them during distribution.
 
Finding the right solution
To solve these problems, Shannon turned to PACK EXPO* to meet potential partners for new materials. This was the venue where she purchased her first shrink packaging machine, the very one which helped expand the business.
“We take great pride in ensuring the superior quality and taste of our cookies, and we need to uphold that commitment consistently to warrant the higher prices we charge for our product,” Ms Shannon said. “Packaging plays a critical role in achieving that goal, both from the perspective of shelf life as well as protection, especially now that we’re servicing customers around the country. Shipping stale or broken cookies just isn’t an option.”

After visiting with several exhibitors, Ms Shannon stopped at the PACK-ALL booth and met with Skip LaFontaine, the company’s sales manager. There, she was educated about the benefits of shrink wrapping and she learned how it would provide the protection and shelf life her cookies needed, whilst stiNike Air Max Lebron