A Great American Cookie Comeback

Michael Curtis, vice president of plant operations for Great American Cookies, waited for nearly two years to see 50-pound bags of “Medium Chocolate Chip” brown sugar make their way down the conveyor belt at Imperial Sugar Company’s refinery in Port Wentworth.

After more than two years, Joseph Greene, an operator at the Port Wentworth refinery, starts the chocolate chip medium brown sugar production line.

For years, Imperial Sugar had made medium brown sugar “that matched what Great American Cookies was looking for,” says Beth Durden-Smith, Imperial Sugar’s business development manager for the industrial channel. “We were the only ones who could make it.”

It was so special that the original Savannah Foods … that’s now become Imperial Sugar Company … named it Medium Chocolate Chip, for the cookies it would eventually go in.

Atlanta-based Great American Cookies has franchises in malls across the country (and has a growing international presence), where they sell a complete line of cookies and brownies, including a signature Cookie Cake product.

Since 1982, all the company’s baked-goods batters have contained Imperial’s sugars. By the early 1990s, Curtis and Imperial Sugar had reformulated a medium brown sugar recipe to meet Great American Cookies’ specifications, dubbing the final result Medium Chocolate Chip. On average, Great American Cookies produces 12 million pounds of cookie dough a year using Imperial’s specialty brown sugar. That’s 12,000,000 pounds of cookie dough!

When the early 2008 accident occurred at Imperial Sugar’s Port Wentworth refinery, says Curtis, “it was devastating to us, as well, though not to the same magnitude. Because what was a very needed ingredient for our product did not exist anymore.”

Workers at Imperial’s Gramercy plant attempted to re-create the specially made medium brown sugar, but it wasn’t the same. Curtis even went to Imperial’s competitors to search for a substitute. “We couldn’t find it. Our hands were tied,” he says.

Franchisees felt the impact. The baked goods weren’t as good as they should have been, says Curtis. “It got to the point where we were seeing a loss of customers due to the change in our product.”

On hand for the start of the medium brown sugar line were (l-r) Kari Gfrorer, Director of Quality Assurance and R&D for Great American Cookies, Beth Durden-Smith, Imperial Business Developement for Industrial Channels, and Michael Curtis, Vice President of Operations for Great American Cookies.

“Michael Curtis kept saying we’ve got to have our medium chocolate chip,” says Durden-Smith.

He got his wish on April 20, when Medium Chocolate Chip roared back into production.

“I applaud everybody down there in Savannah,” says Curtis, “because I pushed pretty hard once I found out they were beginning to produce dark sugar — pushed them to start making our brown sugar again. They could have said no, but they did what they could and got it all running again.”

Joseph Greene, an operator at the Port Wentworth plant, was meticulous about watching the 50-pound bags as they came down the belt. When the weight on a bag was inaccurate he called an electrician to help him with the machine.

The company produced 850 bags that day.

Curtis drove four hours to Port Wentworth to see his company’s sugar coming off the belt again and going into trucks for transport.

Says Curtis, “I’m such a happy camper right now — you can’t believe it.”