INTERCOURSE, PA. — Taylor Chip, which launched in August 2018 by husband-and-wife entrepreneurs Sara and Doug Taylor, is bringing its dessert-focused company that makes cookies, ice cream and coffee to the masses through its $12.5 million, 20,000-square-foot Pennsylvania-based creamery that is opening in 2025. The creamery, and a strong direct-to-consumer business, is enabling the company to move into the consumer packaged goods space (CPG) with cookies as its first product and later ice cream pints, Doug Taylor said.
The move to go beyond the company’s brick-and-mortar stores and online presence is to be more accessible to consumers, he said.
“Our goal with CPG is to be able to serve customers at a lower price point so people don’t always need to order a dozen or half a dozen (cookies) online to experience us,” he said.
The co-founders said they always wanted to offer ice cream. Knowing this, the idea of building a creamery began in 2019 and the couple bought the property in 2020. But a few hiccups, which included the COVID-19 pandemic and local building regulations, halted those plans until now.
“We knew at some point we were going to outgrow the current facility we were in,” Sara Taylor said. “Cookies were Doug’s thing and ice cream is my thing. But it has taken a while because we always wanted to make our own ice cream base and source our own wholesome ingredients, just like our cookies.”
The co-founders began renting the company’s current 5,500-square-foot manufacturing facility in 2021. The plant can produce 12,000 cookies a day, Sara Taylor said. Features include a small storefront, office spaces, space for shipping e-commerce orders, a cookie and package wrapping station and baking equipment.
The co-founders said they are unsure what they will do with the current facility once the creamery is complete, but said it may be used to produce the company’s vegan and gluten-free options.
The company’s goal for the creamery was to provide an “experiential retail location at its mother chip,” — another reason the process has taken longer than expected, Doug Taylor said.
“This new facility will have retail, drive-thru and manufacturing,” he said. “The retail portion of the facility will include a mezzanine where people can overlook the production process. We wanted to create this experience for building memories and giving people a place to connect and enjoy each other.”
To scale within the company’s CPG model, the creamery will be able to produce approximately 40 ice cream pints a minute and 200 cookie dough balls a minute of throughput, he said.
He said the company is working with a local dairy to produce the ice cream until the creamery is completed.
“(The) process will eventually be in our own creamery facility,” Doug Taylor said. “The farm that we work with does not have the space to fulfill pinting our ice cream. We’re also in the processing room ourselves with each new flavor we release.”
Funds for the facility will come from the company’s upcoming seed round.
“It (the seed round) also will help us move faster with brick-and-mortar location growth to have our full Taylor Chip experience everywhere,” Doug Taylor said.
In June, the company launched into approximately 250 stores with cookies as its first product and is aiming to bring its ice cream pints to grocery stores nationwide.
“Our ice cream is now available in our in-store locations, and soon, once we have the necessary equipment to package pints, we’ll be able to bring it to grocery stores nationwide, too,” Doug Taylor said. “We have about 500,000 followers on social (media) and (we’re) continuing to build that. We’ve leveraged our ability to grow on social media as a main way to get retailers’ attention because it’s hard to stand out on the shelf. If you can prove you have traction online, there’s a lot more willingness for retailers to try you.”
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