Twice a day, 18-wheelers pull up to a parking lot tucked into the woods near Six Flags Over Georgia. Into the trucks go 30-pound boxes of cookie dough, chilled at 37 degrees inside the Great American Cookies factory.
It adds up: more than 10 million pounds a year, the makings of best-selling chocolate chip cookies, sugar cookies, oatmeal raisins, M&M's varieties, an icing-stuffed double-decker called the "Double Doozie" and even a hot sauce-flavored chocolate chip variety. Enough to at least put up a credible challenge to America's voracious sweet tooth.
"We try to be innovative with the cookies," said Chris Dull, president and chief executive of Global Franchise Group, the cookie maker's parent company.
But now, the company has to be innovative to deal with an economy that has caused traffic to drop off in shopping malls, where its stores are concentrated.
That "concerns me most," said Dull, a triathlete who once worked at Marble Slab Creamery. "Times are tough."
From its start in 1977 at Perimeter Mall, Great American Cookies has become one of the country's biggest cookie suppliers. With 293 locations in the U.S. and 12 in international markets, it competes with brands such as Mrs. Fields' Original Cookies Inc. and Nestle Toll House Cafe by Chip, when opened 10 years ago and now has more than 100 cafes either open in or in various stages of development in the U.S. and Puerto Rico.
Great American Cookies' sales have been flat so far this year. The company, which declined to give dollar figures, said the past few weeks have seen an increase in sales compared to the same period a year ago, and the important Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays still await. But ingredient prices are up, consumers are trying to save money and things are far from plush.
Great American Cookies is in the hands of new owners. Global Franchise Group, an affiliate of California investment group Levine Leichtman Capital Partners, took over from NexCen Brands Inc. on July 30 and now controls MaggieMoo's, Pretzelmaker/Pretzel Time, Marble Slab Creamery, Shoebox New York and The Athlete's Foot Brands in addition to the cookie outlets -- amounting to about 1,700 stores in more than 35 countries.
About 20 people work in shipping and production at the Great American Cookies facility near I-20, sending products to Mexico and Canada and as far as Guam, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. The company is in the early stages of international expansion but has found that overseas consumers are receptive to its existing product line, including the original chocolate chip recipe.
On a recent weekday, a tide of creamy yellow batter rolled around in a mixer in the production area. Michael Curtis, vice president of plant operations and executive research chef, showed off brownies, cookies and an ice cream pizza inside the R&D kitchen, which also services Great American Cookies' sister brands.
Curtis reserved his highest praise for the peanut butter cookie. "If you get it when it's just cool enough to pull off the tray ... oh man! There's nothing better."
Hoping to elicit similar reactions from shoppers, the company is instituting a new ground-level marketing push to emphasize cookie sampling, one of its main marketing tools. After a shopper grabs a free cookie, "they feel almost an obligation to buy a cookie," Dull said of the company's use of psychology. "Hey, you do what you gotta do."
In its bid to climb above the dwindling fortunes of walk-in malls, the company has another weapon: the cookie cake. Cakes make up between 30 percent and 50 percent of sales at Great American Cookies locations, helping the company pull shoppers into stores. Cookie cakes are typically "destination purchases" rather than impulse buys.
"I wouldn't say our products are recession-proof," said Dull, "but it's a relatively affordable indulgence."
In relying on cakes to help stabilize the business, Great American Cookies is following a similar game plan as ice cream maker Carvel, which is owned by Atlanta-based Focus Brands.
Carvel, which says it makes about 60 percent of all the ice cream cakes sold in the U.S., relies on those cakes to pay the bills in the ice cream offseason, said Gary Bales, president of the brand. Carvel's sales, bolstered by those cakes, have risen for three straight years.
What about worries about waistlines? Health consciousness has encouraged companies from Coca-Cola to PepsiCo to McDonald's and Chick-fil-A to tweak their product lineups to accentuate lower-calorie items. But that trend has apparently not reached Great American Cookies. Most customers don't actually want reduced calories in a cookie, said Dull.
"A single cookie is not going to break the bank on caloric intake," he said. "At the end of the day, we're about decadent desserts. We know who we are. We are not a health-food concept."
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