The challenge of putting less in a cookie
By John Fladd
It’s probably fair to say that Jill Robbins’ cookie journey started largely because of classroom snacks.
“My son has food allergies,” Robbins said, “and I started my company so that kids like him could join in socially when treats are served. I wanted to make it easier for anybody who serves [food] to include people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to join in. And pretty much every social occasion revolves around baked treats, which are pretty much always made with allergens like milk and wheat and eggs and butter.” Add to that any ingredients that might have been made or processed in a facility with foods like peanuts or tree nuts, and snacking can quickly get complicated and problematic.
Robbins’ company, Homefree (homefreetreats.com), in Windham, makes cookies that as many people on restricted diets as possible can enjoy.
“[Our cookies] are free of the top 14 food allergens. The top nine are the ones you have to put on a label, and those are peanuts, tree nuts, eggs, dairy, wheat, soy, fish, shellfish, and more recently sesame,” she said. Additionally they are vegan, certified gluten-free, and kosher pareve, meaning that they have been approved for someone following kosher dietary guidelines.
Homefree makes packaged cookies for retail sales and food service, including chocolate chip, double chocolate chip, vanilla, lemon, chocolate mint and ginger snap.
“We now have large, soft, chocolate chip cookies and brownies that we’ve just started offering to food service,” Robbins said. “So people could request it from food service if there’s, say somebody works somewhere that has a break room where they provide snacks or a cafeteria or if there’s a hotel or a hospital or a cafe or a school or a camp, they can all get the large soft cookies and the brownies.”
Starting a business, particularly a food business, can be complicated, but meeting Robbins’ goals gave her an extra layer of difficulty.
“There’s something called Safe Quality Food, or SQF,” she said, “that’s a very high-level food quality and safety certification. Just the annual audit is three days long. It’s on everything related to food quality and safety, documentation and traceability”
Sourcing reliably pure ingredients has been another challenge. Because it is a common allergen, Homefree can’t use wheat flour.
“We use gluten-free whole oat flour,” Robbins said. “Our oat flour comes from a place that does gluten-free oats.”
Ultimately, one of Homefree’s biggest objectives is making a good cookie.
“There was a company that did a survey,” Robbins said. “They took our single-serve bags of chocolate chip mini cookies and bags of Chips Ahoy, and sent them to over 400 women and asked all kinds of questions. Basically, 73 percent preferred Homefree. So it’s a regular, good cookie, but one that essentially everybody can eat.”
“When I think about what we sell,” Robbins said, “it’s not cookies. It’s inclusiveness in the form of cookies.”
Homefree
See homefreetreats.com for more information including a list of stores selling the cookies.
Featured photo: Courtesy photo.
