The building housing DeBaufre Bakeries in South Baltimore is easy to miss, and owner Charles DeBaufre Jr. aims to keep it that way.
“If I put up a big sign, people would come up to the building, hoping to buy the Berger Cookies,” said DeBaufre, whose family is the third to manufacture the famous cookies, after buying the brand in 1969.
Berger Cookies have been produced in Baltimore since 1835, upon the Berger family?s emigration from Germany.
Since the 1980s, sales of Berger Cookies have steadily grown from roughly 60 percent of DeBaufre?s business to 80 percent today, with sales of DeBaufre-brand cakes making up the rest.
As the Berger Cookie mystique grows year after year, DeBaufre has increased the number of delivery routes from two to six, with Berger Cookies now available in select retailers in such areas as northern Virginia, Frederick and Delaware.
And in just the past few years, more area retailers have begun to sell the new Berger Cookie snack pack, which includes two cookies for people on the go.
Berger Cookie aficionados increasingly are ordering shipments of the mouthwatering cookies to be delivered to their doorsteps, said DeBaufre. Approximately 10 percent of Berger Cookie sales are now through orders made online, though shipping during the summer is a risky proposition as the heat quickly melts the cookies? classic fudge topping.
Yet, potential shipping-related deformities have not stopped orders being placed from as far away as Italy and Hong Kong.
“It certainly makes the grind of an overseas deployment easier to bear,” wrote Warren Tomlinson, of the U.S. Navy Reserve, in a letter from Iraq, after sharing boxes of Berger Cookies with his entire fighter squadron.
And Charles DeBaufre hinted that even more Americans might soon be enjoying Baltimore?s favorite cookies.
“We have set up an exploratory committee to assess the possibility of creating a new production facility in Florida,” said DeBaufre.
Only time will tell if Floridians should be so lucky.
