Company type | Private |
---|---|
Industry | Baked goods |
Founded | 1898Torphins, Scotland | in
Founder | Joseph Walker |
Headquarters | Aberlour House Aberlour, Scotland |
Area served | Worldwide |
Products | Shortbread, biscuits, cookies, and crackers |
Revenue | £164 million (2022) [1] |
Number of employees | 1,400 (2023) [1] |
Website | walkersshortbread |
Walker's Shortbread Ltd. (formerly Walkers) is a Scottish manufacturer of shortbread, biscuits, cookies, and crackers. The shortbread is baked in the Moray village of Aberlour, following a recipe developed by Joseph Walker in 1898.
The company is one of Scotland's biggest exporters of food, [2] [3] and employs over 1,200 people. [4] It is sold in tartan packaging all over the world. [5]
The business was founded by Joseph Walker in the village of Aberlour, Speyside, in 1898. It quickly started producing shortbread. [6] During the 1930s, two of Walkers' sons – James and Joseph – joined the family business. By 1936 they had purchased a van to allow for delivery of Walker's products outside of the local area. Joseph Walker, the founder, died in 1954 and passed the company to his children. By 1961, all three of James Walkers' children were also working for the firm. By 1970, the company had expanded to almost 100 employees, 14 vans, and two additional shops in the nearby towns of Elgin and Grantown-on-Spey. It had also expanded its baking operations in the store and its products could be found in British fine food stores. During the 1970s, the company would begin exporting to over 60 countries and by 1975 the company had opened its own factory. [7]
The company started producing oaten biscuits for Duchy Originals in 1992, having been approached the previous year. [8]
The profits of Walker's Shortbread, which is also still owned and managed by the Walker family, [9] were diminished by a global increase in the price of butter in 2018 by around 50% [10] due to supply shortages and demand increases, resulting in the company seeing a 60% drop in operating profit. [11]
The company rebranded, in 2020, changing its name to Walker's Shortbread Ltd. [12] It announced it was exploring how to create a vegan version of the butter-based biscuit in 2024. [13]
Walker's Shortbread have their headquarters at Aberlour House in Aberlour and have a production site in Elgin. [14]
A cookie or biscuit is a baked snack or dessert that is typically small, flat, and sweet. It usually contains flour, sugar, egg, and some type of oil, fat, or butter. It may include other ingredients such as raisins, oats, chocolate chips, or nuts.
A chocolate chip cookie is a drop cookie that features chocolate chips or chocolate morsels as its distinguishing ingredient. Chocolate chip cookies are claimed to have originated in the United States in 1938, when Ruth Graves Wakefield chopped up a Nestlé semi-sweet chocolate bar and added the chopped chocolate to a cookie recipe; however, historical recipes for grated or chopped chocolate cookies exist prior to 1938 by various other authors.
Nabisco is an American manufacturer of cookies and snacks headquartered in East Hanover, New Jersey. The company is a subsidiary of Illinois-based Mondelēz International.
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Girl Scout Cookies are cookies sold by Girl Scouts in the United States to raise funds to support Girl Scout councils and individual troops. The cookies are widely popular and are commonly sold by going door-to-door, online, through school or town fundraisers, or at "cookie booths" set up at storefronts. The program is intended to both raise money and improve the financial literacy of girls. During an average selling season, more than one million girls sell over 200 million packages of cookies and raise over $800 million. The first known sale of cookies by Girl Scouts was in 1917. Cookie sales are organized by 112 regional Girl Scout councils who select one of two national bakeries to buy cookies from.
Shortbread or shortie is a traditional Scottish biscuit usually made from one part white sugar, two parts butter and three to four parts plain wheat flour. Shortbread does not contain any leavening, such as baking powder or baking soda. Shortbread is widely associated with Christmas and Hogmanay festivities in Scotland, and some Scottish brands are exported around the world.
The J.M. Smucker Company, also known as Smuckers, is an American manufacturer of food and beverage products. Headquartered in Orrville, Ohio, the company was founded in 1897 as a maker of apple butter. J.M. Smucker currently has three major business units: consumer foods, pet foods, and coffee. Its flagship brand, Smucker's, produces fruit preserves, peanut butter, syrups, frozen crustless sandwiches, and ice cream toppings.
The Keebler Company is an American cookie and former cracker manufacturer. Founded in 1853, it has produced numerous baked snacks, advertised with the Keebler Elves. Keebler had marketed its brands such as Cheez-It, Chips Deluxe, Club Crackers, E.L. Fudge Cookies, Famous Amos, Fudge Shoppe Cookies, Murray cookies, Austin, Plantation, Vienna Fingers, Town House Crackers, Wheatables, Sandie's Shortbread, Pizzarias Pizza Chips, Chachos and Zesta Crackers, among others. Keebler slogans have included "Uncommonly Good" and "a little elfin magic goes a long way". Tom Shutter and Leo Burnett wrote the familiar jingle.
A sugar cookie, or sugar biscuit, is a cookie with the main ingredients being sugar, flour, butter, eggs, vanilla, and either baking powder or baking soda. Sugar cookies may be formed by hand, dropped, or rolled and cut into shapes. They may be decorated with additional sugar, icing, sprinkles, or a combination of these. Decorative shapes and figures can be cut into the rolled-out dough using a cookie cutter.
The famous malted milk biscuit, first produced by Elkes Biscuits of Uttoxeter in 1924. They are named after their malt flavouring and milk content.
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Joseph Nicol Walker is a Scottish former professional footballer, who played as a goalkeeper for several clubs in Scotland and England. Walker was selected for many Scotland squads during the 1990s, earning two international caps.
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Qurabiya also ghraybe, ghorayeba, ghoriba, ghribia, ghraïba, gurabija, ghriyyaba, or kourabiedes and numerous other spellings and pronunciations, is a shortbread-type biscuit, usually made with ground almonds. Versions are found in most Arab, Balkan and Ottoman cuisines, with various different forms and recipes. They are similar to polvorones from Andalusia.
A sandwich cookie, also known as a sandwich biscuit, is a type of cookie made from two thin cookies or medium cookies with a filling between them. Many types of fillings are used, such as cream, ganache, buttercream, chocolate, cream cheese, jam, peanut butter, lemon curd, or ice cream.
Kaasstengels, Kastengel or kue keju are a Dutch cheese snack in the shape of sticks. Owing to its colonial links to the Netherlands, kaasstengels are also commonly found in Indonesia. The name refers to its ingredients, shape and origin; kaas is the Dutch word for "cheese", while stengels means "sticks". Unlike most cookies, kaasstengels taste savoury and salty instead of sweet.
Aberlour House is a country house near Aberlour in Moray, Scotland. It was built in 1838 by William Robertson for Alexander Grant, planter and merchant from Aberlour, after his return to the UK. His niece, Margaret Macpherson Grant, lived in it after Grant died, and it was later home to John Ritchie Findlay of The Scotsman newspaper and his descendants. It was requisitioned for military use during the Second World War, and after the war was sold for use as a preparatory school for Gordonstoun. The school was later moved into Gordonstoun's estate, and the building was sold to Walkers Shortbread, who restored and renovated it, and now use it as their head office. It has been designated a Category A listed building.