Company type | Private |
---|---|
Industry | Baked goods |
Founded | 1898Torphins, Scotland | in
Founder | Joseph Walker |
Headquarters | Aberlour, Scotland |
Area served | Worldwide |
Products | Shortbread, biscuits, cookies, and crackers |
Website | walkersshortbread |
Walker's Shortbread Ltd. (formerly Walkers) is a Scottish manufacturer of shortbread, biscuits, cookies, and crackers. The company's well-known 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, [1] [2] and employs over 1,200 people. [3] It is sold in tartan packaging all over the world. [4]
The business was founded by Joseph Walker in the village of Aberlour, Speyside, in 1898. It quickly started producing shortbread. [5] The company started producing oaten biscuits for Duchy Originals in 1992, having been approached the previous year. [6]
The profits of Walker's Shortbread, which is also still owned and managed by the Walker family, [7] were diminished by a global increase in the price of butter in 2018 by around 50% [8] due to supply shortages and demand increases, resulting in the company seeing a 60% drop in operating profit. [9]
The company rebranded, in 2020, changing its name to Walker's Shortbread Ltd. [10] It announced it was exploring how to create a vegan version of the butter-based biscuit in 2024. [11]
Walker's Shortbread have their headquarters at Aberlour House in Aberlour and have a production site in Elgin. [12]
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.
A biscuit, in most English speaking countries, is a flour-based baked and shaped food product. Biscuits are typically hard, flat, and unleavened. They are usually sweet and may be made with sugar, chocolate, icing, jam, ginger, or cinnamon. They can also be savoury, similar to crackers. Types of biscuit include sandwich biscuits, digestive biscuits, ginger biscuits, shortbread biscuits, chocolate chip cookies, chocolate-coated marshmallow treats, Anzac biscuits, biscotti, and speculaas.
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.
Gingerbread refers to a broad category of baked goods, typically flavored with ginger, cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon and sweetened with honey, sugar, or molasses. Gingerbread foods vary, ranging from a moist loaf cake to forms nearly as crisp as a ginger snap.
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.
McVitie's is a British snack food brand owned by United Biscuits. The name derives from the original Scottish biscuit maker, McVitie & Price, Ltd., established in 1830 on Rose Street in Edinburgh, Scotland. The company moved to various sites in the city before completing the St. Andrews Biscuit Works factory on Robertson Avenue in the Gorgie district in 1888. The company also established one in Glasgow and two large manufacturing plants south of the border, in Heaton Chapel, Stockport, and Park Royal, London. There are seven McVitie's factories in the UK, with each producing a different types of biscuit; the Harlesden site in north-west London manufactures the chocolate digestives.
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.
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George Weston Limited, often referred to as Weston or Weston's, is a Canadian holding company. Founded by George Weston in 1882, the company today consists of the Choice Properties real estate investment trust and Loblaw Companies Limited, Canada's largest supermarket retailer, in which it maintains a controlling interest. Retail brands include President's Choice, No Name and Joe Fresh. The former Weston Bakeries division, which owned the brands Wonder, Country Harvest, D'Italiano, Ready Bake and Gadoua, was sold off to FGF Brands in 2022. The company is controlled by the Weston family, which owns a majority share in George Weston Limited.
Caramel shortbread, also known as caramel squares, caramel slice, millionaire's shortbread, millionaire's slice, chocolate caramel shortbread, and Wellington squares is a biscuit confectionery item composed of a rectangular, triangular or circular shortbread biscuit base topped with caramel and milk chocolate. Variations exist which substitute or add ingredients to cater to different tastes, dietary requirements or ingredient availability.
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.
Arnott's Group is an Australian producer of biscuits and snack food. Founded in 1865 by William Arnott, they are the largest producer of biscuits in Australia and a subsidiary of KKR.
A polvorón is a type of heavy, soft, and very crumbly Spanish shortbread made of flour, sugar, milk, and nuts. They are mostly produced in Andalusia, where there are about 70 factories that are part of a syndicate that produces polvorones and mantecados. Under the name mantecados, these sweets are a traditional preparation of other areas of the Iberian Peninsula and other Spanish-speaking countries as well.
Burry's is a food manufacturer, founded as Burry's Biscuit Corporation by George W. Burry in 1888 in Elizabeth, New Jersey. It became a division of the Quaker Oats Company in 1962. The company was one of the manufacturers of Girl Scout cookies from 1936 until 1989.
Qurabiya, is a shortbread-type biscuit, usually made with ground almonds. Versions are found in most Arab and Ottoman cuisines, with various different forms and recipes. They are similar to polvorones from Andalusia.
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.