History
The Berger Cookie recipe was brought to America from Germany by George and Henry Berger in 1835. Henry owned a bakery in East Baltimore which was later run by his son Henry. While the younger Henry took over his father's bakery, his two brothers, George and Otto, opened their own bakeries. Around 1900 Otto died, then George and Henry combined the bakeries to create 'Bergers'. As technology grew so did the bakery. Eventually Henry died, leaving George as the sole proprietor of the bakery.
When George retired he sold the bakery and the recipe to Charles E. Russell. Charles' son, Charles Jr., took control upon his father's retirement. Charles Jr. and his sons, Charles III and Dennis, ran the business through the Depression. They employed two brothers, Charles and Benjamin DeBaufre. When Charles Jr. retired, he left the bakery to Charles III and Dennis. Meanwhile the DeBaufre brothers left the business to start DeBaufre Bakeries Inc.
The Berger cookie is well-known for its thick chocolate frosting layered on top of a shortbread cookie. The recipe has won several awards around the Baltimore area including the 2011 "Best of Baltimore Award" and the "Best Cookie" award in 2011. The product has also been featured in The Baltimore Sun, The View, and on Rachel Ray and The Best Thing I Ever Ate on the Food Network.
DeBaufre Bakeries was able to earn enough of a profit to purchase Berger's from the Russell family in 1969. Charles' son, Charles DeBaufre Jr., purchased part of the business in 1978. Charles Sr. died in 1988 leaving ownership to Benjamin, Charles Jr., and John Koehler. Charles Jr. became the sole proprietor of Berger Cookies in 1994 when Benjamin retired.
Read more about this topic: Berger Cookies
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that’s also a hypocrite!
There are only two great currents in the history of mankind: the baseness which makes conservatives and the envy which makes revolutionaries.”
—Edmond De Goncourt (1822–1896)
“If usually the “present age” is no very long time, still, at our pleasure, or in the service of some such unity of meaning as the history of civilization, or the study of geology, may suggest, we may conceive the present as extending over many centuries, or over a hundred thousand years.”
—Josiah Royce (1855–1916)