When planning holiday celebrations, consumer frequently put special-occasion bakery purchases on the guest list. According to Jennifer Loegering, marketing manager for Primera Technology, bakery professionals at operations of all sizes can help customers make such events even more special—and increase their seasonal sales—with Eddie the Edible Ink Printer. The technology makes it possible to decorate cookies and other treats with unique images.

To learn more about holiday bakery buys and the edible ink technology, Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery connected with Loegering.

Jenni Spinner: Could you please talk about special-occasion products that bakeries offer? This could be anything from holiday cookies, birthday cakes, etc.

Jennifer Loegering: Bakeries traditionally offer cakes and cookies for special occasions including birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, often personalized with a name, short message, and favorite colors. Most bakeries also offer special treats, cakes, and cookies for the major holidays such as Easter, Halloween, Valentine’s Day, Hanukkah, and Christmas.

JS: Then, could you please talk about how folks frequently look to make such products special and personal—what kinds of decoration and design elements to bakeries offer to deliver?

JL: Many bakeries are taking their decorating to the next level, offering personalized cookies and confections by adding photos, custom graphics, logos and more. Eddie’s high-quality printing makes that possible. What could be more personal than a photo of the birthday girl or boy or graduate on a cookie? Eddie can also print any graphic, pattern, or logo. Want an 80’s themed cookie set? No problem. You can print a photo or a clip art of a boom box or a cassette tape directly onto a cookie.

JS: Please tell us about Primera’s technology—how it works, and the equipment and software required.

JL: Eddie the Edible Ink Printer is a commercial-grade food printer. It prints full-color photos, logos, graphics, and text directly onto the surface of cookies, macarons, cupcake toppers, white chocolate, fondant, donuts, and other confections. The rotating carousel holds a dozen items and will print over 300 confections per hour or just one in about 10 seconds. The carousel feeder rotates the cookies to the print position and the printer pulls in cookies one at a time, adjusts for the height of each cookie, prints, and sends them back to the carousel, all automatically.  

BarTender software for Windows is included with purchase and is a template tool for sizing your images. Most customers use other design programs and then import the file into BarTender to print. For customers using a Mac, they can print directly from preview or from other design program like Swift Publisher or Adobe Illustrator.

JS: What types of bakery operations are these best suited for? Does the footprint or size make it better suited for bigger operations, or would they also be suited for smaller businesses?

JL: Eddie is at home in any size bakery. With the carousel installed, Eddie is compact with a footprint of just 16 x 31 inches. Eddie can print a dozen cookies in just two minutes or over 300 in an hour, so it is suited for small and large orders. Eddie is also a fully certified bakery appliance. Eddie’s print head and all inks are certified as GMP components. Eddie is Kosher Pareve Certified and is also the first and only edible ink printer ever approved by NSF, a USA-based company that certifies hundreds of thousands of items used in food preparation.

JS: How has the market responded to the technology since it first debuted? Can you also tell us about any updates or new additions to the line since it was released?

JL: Coined “Eddie Fever” by our loyal customers, Eddie has quickly become bakers’ choice for their edible ink printing needs. Not only is Eddie fully certified, but Eddie has also earned a 4.8 out of 5-star rating from our customers. We have over 30,000 members in our Facebook user group and over 50,000 followers on Instagram. We have recently started selling a platform adapter kit that increases the height of items you can print to 2 inches to accommodate donuts, white chocolate dipped Oreos, and mini lunchbox (or bento) cakes.

JS: Do you have any upcoming products in this area you’d like to tell us about?

JL: Yes, we do have some exciting new products in the works that are related to Eddie and expand the product line that we are referring to as the Eddie Ecosystem.  

JS: Do you have anything to add?

JL: Eddie is designed to speed up the decorating process and allows bakers to print intricate designs, photos and logos that would be nearly impossible to replicate by hand. This helps bakeries produce custom confections more quickly and with high quality and ultimately helps them make more money.

Related: Ingrained Insights Podcast on Eddie the Edible Ink Printer