Voortman Cookies
Voortman Cookies Limited is a Canadian company specializing in the production and sale of cookies. Based in Burlington, Ontario, Voortman brand cookies are sold in supermarkets across Canada, the United States, Puerto Rico, and over 70 other countries worldwide.
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, the Netherlands, in 1948 with their father, who had operated a bread bakery there. In 1951 they founded their first bakery in Hamilton, Ontario, renting a small back room 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, an unspecified Canadian 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 cookies were their main product by then, the brothers continued 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, when Voortman Cookies moved to its present-day facility on the Queen Elizabeth Way and Appleby Line in east Burlington.
Today Voortman Cookies makes over 60 varieties of cookies, including lines of sugar-free and low sugar products. The Burlington plant remains the sole production facility, where over 400 full-time workers are employed. Voortman's cookies are distributed throughout North America by a network of over 450 independent distributors.
Trans fat ban
In 2003, Voortman Cookies gained media attention when president Harry Voortman announced that as of April 5, 2004, no trans fats would be used in the production of its cookies. This made Voortman Cookies the first Canadian food company and one of the first in North America to abolish the use of trans-fats in retail food products.[1]