Pepperidge Farm parent company warns cookies in short supply this holiday season

Pepperidge Farm’s parent company Campbell Soup warned that cookies could be short in supply this holiday season due to “supply constraints” in its cookie division.

The supply concerns stem from a combination of labor shortages due to COVID-19 and high demands as people remain at home, surging the cookie-sector “challenge,” Campbell’s Chief Executive Officer Mark Clouse said on an earnings call Wednesday, Bloomberg reported.

Campbell has also seen heavier demands in its other line of grocery store products, including Goldfish crackers and its soup production, which saw higher demands during the pandemic.

The company said one of the obstacles with supplying its cookie demand is the production of cookie shapes like its Bordeaux or Linzer variants. The company doesn’t outsource to third-party manufacturers to produce them, proving difficult to maintain supply amid a limited workforce due to COVID-19.

“This portfolio is unique with proprietary recipes, and therefore we do not outsource production,” Campbell said in a statement to Bloomberg News. “We’ve prioritized increasing supply and are already leveraging capacity opportunities across the network to meet increases in demand and maximize availability.”

Data shows the supply constraints are coming during a skyrocketing demand. Demand was elevated up to 8.7 percent during a 13-week period that ended Nov. 1.

The company called the consumption trend, “sustained and very strong.”

A report from Top Data showed general cookie demand in the U.S. increased by 25 percent during the pandemic, with one in five Americans consuming over three cookies per day.

The data also keeps track of national cookie consumption per month, reporting that nearly a third of U.S. residents eat between 24 and 48 cookies per month, and almost 40 percent consume more than that amount.