Notable Edible - Cape Cod Cookies

“People are happy to see me. I mean, who could get mad at a cookie?” Josh Ledger comments about making the delivery rounds to restock retail shelves across Eastern Massachusetts with his and his wife, Leah’s, handmade line of Cape Cod Cookies. The smiles Josh encounters only grow after biting into the soft, delicate sweetness of the incredibly fresh cookies that are no more than a few days removed from the oven when they hit the shelves.

Cape Cod Cookies began in a rather un-Cape like fashion. Janice Peterson’s love of baking, cookies in particular, led her to open a wholesale cookie company from her home kitchen in Wellesley, MA in 1993. It wasn’t until 2009 that Janice and her husband Kenneth relocated to South Harwich. A re-branding was in order, and “Cape Cod Cookies” began to appear on retail shelves across the Cape. Tragically, Janice passed away unexpectedly in 2012, leaving Kenneth to continue Janice’s passion and legacy.

Looking for help in September of 2020, little did Kenneth know that he had found the future of the company when Leah Ledger responded to his “help wanted” notice. Working as the head baker, Leah gradually expanded her duties. “I began to take over little by little,” she remembers. “Getting to know the whole business.” A year and a half later, the allure of retirement became too enticing, and Ken didn’t have to look far for someone to carry on his wife’s dream. “I think he just noticed how much time and effort I was putting in, and he approached me and my husband and said, ‘Would you guys want to buy it?’” Leah says. Josh adds, “He saw the potential for us to expand the business.” The sale was finalized in the first days of 2022, and the Ledgers haven’t looked back.

The team at Cape Cod Cookies is small but mighty. Leah manages the baking with typically two or three employees. The oven is fired up twenty-four hours a day, five days a week at their production kitchen on White’s Path in South Yarmouth. “We like to have weekends off to spend time with our kids,” Leah explains. There are times when it’s “all hands on deck” and 16-year-old Landyn and nine-year-old Blake join in to help. What they turn out in an average week is nothing short of staggering. One hundred forty batches a day totaling 12,000 cookies a week! Josh points out, “Everything’s made from scratch, and everything’s done in-house from the mixing, the portioning, the rolling, the baking, the bagging, the boxing. All the bags that we do, we print those labels and we put those labels on the bags ourselves.” Leah adds, “I hand roll every cookie. I crack every egg.” When the math is calculated, it equals 2400 eggs a week. The realization sets in when she repeats herself with a chuckle, “Ugh, I crack every egg.” The chocolate chip count is another astounding number. Leah uses 90,000 chips a week to keep up with demand of the best seller.

Josh handles the logistical side of the business, from ordering, packaging and invoicing, to delivering Wednesdays through Fridays. “I call the clients and talk with the bakery managers of the stores we’re in,” he states. It’s this personal connection that allows the Ledgers to fill orders as needed and deliver the orders promptly. “The cookies are no more than two days old, and sometimes still warm, when they hit the shelves.” With no preservatives, freshness is paramount to Cape Cod Cookies. He travels the circuit around Cape Cod and over the bridge to Roche Bros. Markets and Sudbury Farms locations including downtown crossing in Boston. In total, Cape Cod Cookies are on the shelves of thirty-eight locations, fourteen of which are on Cape, including Friends’ Marketplace in Orleans, Ring Brothers in Dennis, Gray Gables Market in Bourne and even on the Hy-Line ferries to the islands.

Out of the nine cookies offered, the seven year-round flavors – peanut butter, snickerdoodle, ginger snap, oatmeal raisin, cranberry oatmeal, white chocolate cranberry and, of course, chocolate chip – are the original recipes that were created by Janice. “Those were Janice’s recipes that we won’t touch,” Ledger says. Leah’s creativity shines through with the rotation of seasonal cookies that play off the same soft texture of Janice’s base cookie recipe. The double chocolate and pumpkin spice are two recent fall flavors. “We’ll also do colored sugar cookies for the holidays,” Josh says.

The plans for the near future, in addition to growing the list of stores offering Cape Cod Cookies, include opening their own retail space so customers can come directly to them. It’ll give Leah a chance to try out new flavors and get immediate feedback. “We could add more cookies to what we already have with a flavor of the week,” Leah envisions. “We could have twenty flavors and see what really takes off and expand it from there.”

Paying homage to the past with an eye toward an expanding future, Leah and Josh Ledger continue to sweeten the world one batch of Cape Cod Cookies at a time.

Cape Cod Cookies
capecodcookiesllc.com
774-810-2310