CHICAGO — It’s hard to miss the ingredients listed on the new packaging for Matt’s Cookies. Relatively few and easily pronounced, they are emblazoned in large letters on the back of the package.
The message Matt’s Cookies hopes to convey: Our cookies are made with real stuff.
Emphasizing that point in the revamped packaging is all part of the plan for new owners of the longtime Wheeling, Ill.-based purveyor of soft-baked cookies and fig bars, a brand so Chicago that it had a cameo in the 1985 John Hughes film “The Breakfast Club.” The new packaging also replaces the old-school brown gingham with a vibrant red hue.
After flagging sales in recent years, the Pierce family sold the company in May to City Capital Ventures, a private investment firm, for an undisclosed amount. New CEO Mike Halverson hopes to expand the business by repositioning the brand toward today’s consumer trends and expanding distribution into new markets.
“The cookies didn’t need fixing. There really wasn’t a fix or something we had to come in here and solve. Really what we wanted to do was grow it,” Halverson said.
The change in ownership came several years after a personal loss for the Pierce family. Matt Pierce, namesake of the cookie brand and vice president of the company, died in November 2012 at age 39.
Grant Pierce, Matt’s father, who founded the company in 1972, and Blake Pierce, Matt’s brother, declined to be interviewed for this story. Both men remain involved in the business.
“The focus of the company is forward,” Blake Pierce, vice president of operations for Matt’s Cookies, wrote in an email, declining to answer questions about his brother.
In a 2000 Chicago Tribune story, Matt Pierce talked about the challenges of increasing competition and the need to grow the family business into new markets in order to survive. Matt’s Cookies are sold in stores throughout the Midwest and in a few other scattered markets, such as Texas and Florida.
The new ownership group hopes to expand the distribution into the Northeast, Halverson said, and possibly other markets such as Denver and Phoenix. Meanwhile, the recipe for the soft-baked cookies will remain the same, though a new flavor was introduced this month in the Chicago market: Double Chocolate Chip.
In Chicago, the plan is to increase marketing efforts to reconnect customers with the brand. This past summer, Matt’s Cookies hired a small cadre of “brand ambassadors” to give out samples and talk to consumers throughout the Chicago area, Halverson said.
“One of challenges for Matt’s is it really hadn’t been marketed for a few years. … It had been forgotten, at least in some people’s minds,” Halverson said.
The big-picture goal is to quadruple revenue in the next five or so years to $20 million. Sales had fallen from about $8 million in 2000. Halverson attributed that decline to a drop-off in the company’s private-label business, which accounts for roughly 40 percent of sales.
Halverson declined to say whether the company is profitable, but said recent investments would help with long-term growth.
Nationally, packaged cookies sold in the center of the store — as opposed to the bakery — generated $7.3 billion in sales in 2016, up 2.6 percent from the previous year, according to Nielsen data. Sales have remained steady over the last several years.
Increasingly, consumers like foods that are made with the type of ingredients they might find in their own cupboards and that are locally sourced. That’s exactly what drew Halverson and his fellow investors to Matt’s Cookies. The chocolate chips also are sourced locally, from Chicago-based Blommer Chocolate Co.
The cookie shelves are crowded at grocery stores, the options more abundant than ever. But Halverson thinks Matt’s Cookies is ready to flourish once more.
“Our real point of difference is the quality of ingredients and how that translates into a taste experience for the consumers. … It’s a retro strategy that’s playing out in today’s marketplace,” he said.
