Company: The Cookie Department

Website: thecookiedepartment.com

Introduced: October 2018

Distribution: National

Product Snapshot: The Cookie Department has announced that it will no longer make its line of fully-functional cookies using palm oil; instead, the company has already begun using algae butter in all of its cookie flavors with the exception of its Great Full oatmeal cookie.

“After working for the past year with the company that produces algea butter, I can confidently say that we are the only baked goods company in the entire world to be using their product,” said founder and CEO Akiva Resnikoff.  “For us, algae butter is a fabulous enhancement to dairy butter because it essentially has the same texture, binding capabilities and taste, but with half the saturated fat.”

Resnikoff went on to add that algae butter is also a more versatile product as it’s a vegan alternative. The Cookie Department continues to use dairy butter, but its cookies are now only made with 50-percent of the kitchen staple.  

“The feedback from our customers is that they can’t tell the difference in taste,” added Resnikoff.  “The concept of algae butter may sound unappealing, but when used to bake with there is no taste difference.”

The company has also eliminated palm oil from its products. While palm oil has always been considered unhealthy for humans, it is now affecting the orangutan population. While the mammals aren’t eating palm oil, they’re being driven from their homes as forests throughout Indonesia and Malaysia, which accounts for 85-percent of the world’s palm oil production, are being destroyed in order to meet the supply and demand.

“It may seem trivial, but what’s happening in these countries is very serious to our eco-system,” shared Resnikoff. “We hope that by removing palm oil from our cookie products that we are, in a sense, doing our part to save the forests and their inhabitants from total destruction and extinction. We hope other companies take notice as well.”  

The Cookie Department line of fully-functional cookies, available nationwide at specialty retailers and markets, juice and smoothie bars, gyms, college campuses, cafes, sporting goods stores, movie theaters, hotels, and grocery stores, also fuel the staff at some of the largest tech companies in Silicon Valley, Silicon Beach and Austin, Texas.

The cookies are designed to meet certain needs throughout the day and are all kosher certified, made with all-natural ingredients, have zero trans-fat with vegan options.

Current flavors include:

• Tough Cookie – Peanut butter toffee cookie with 10 grams of rBST free whey protein
• Great Full – Sweet potato cranberry oatmeal antioxidant cookie (vegan)
• Snap Back – Ginger and cayenne spiced cookie
• Chocolate Chip Nookie – Rich chocolate chip cookie infused with Maca Root (made with dairy butter instead of algae butter)
• Awaken Baked - Double chocolate chip cookie containing 40 mg of Fair Trade coffee