CENTREVILLE, MI – Consumers in more than two dozen states are starting to appreciate something St. Joseph County residents have known for the past two decades: Yoder’s Country Market makes cookies that can’t be beat.
The completion earlier this year of a new production area, coupled with a distribution network that takes made-in-Centreville treats to every state east of the Mississippi River and a handful to the west, have resulted in Yoder’s earning national recognition for its cookies and a few other bakery items.
Owner Jon Yoder admits he never imagined when he opened the country market 20 years ago, its cookies would hold a place of such prominence beyond St. Joseph County.
“I know we have a good product, it sells well, people buy it once and they like it, so they buy it a second time,” Yoder said. “By that point, in most cases, we’ll have a customer for life.”
The increased exposure of Yoder’s cookies started out of necessity, he said. It goes back to 2014, when he purchased the building behind the market.
Yoder said he anticipated the eventual need for the additional 14,000 square feet for production, so acquiring the adjacent building made sense. But, he added, it also presented an unexpected quandary.
“What I didn’t realize was adding 14,000 square feet to the same retail space would create a problem because we had this increased overhead but couldn’t really change anything to bring more customers through the front door … you can’t grow your market by 30% on a local level (to help offset the expense of acquiring the new building),” Yoder said. “So, we had to look for a new market, we had to decide what might sell well in a new market. Eventually, we decided on cookies.”
As it turns out, Yoder’s choice was spot on. Before realizing the unexpected level of love Yoder’s cookies would receive outside the Southwest Michigan market, however, Yoder said a need for an even larger production floor and a viable plan for distribution were the next hurdles to clear.
Addressing the latter, Yoder’s and Holmes County, Ohio-based distributor Walnut Creek Foods have enjoyed a strong partnership from the day Yoder’s market opened its Centreville location in July 2005.
“They’ve been stocking my deli case from the day we opened … we have been doing business with them from day one and we’ve had a great relationship,” Yoder said. “So, I approached the people at Walnut Creek and told them we’ve got to sell product somewhere away from here as well. It was a negative for them and at first they said no, they had their own product they wanted to market.”
The 50-year-old Yoder, a Pennsylvania native, said the wheels of fate started turning, however, when COVID flipped everything upside down in March 2020. Yoder said Walnut Creek was attempting to establish its own line of bakery products, but that effort was thwarted by interruptions in the supply chain triggered by the pandemic.
Eventually, Walnut Creek agreed to take on Yoder’s cookies, distributing them alongside a Walnut Creek cinnamon roll that Yoder said has actually done well. Nonetheless, it didn’t take long for the Ohio market to embrace a line of cookies on store shelves from a place called Yoder’s in Centreville. Pleased with the interest in Yoder’s cookies, Walnut Creek now distributes them to locations in every state east of the Mississippi River.
Yoder said he attends about half a dozen food trade shows around the country and the effort has paid dividends.
“Every year we pick up more clients and we’re now up to five distributors,” he said, noting in-house-made whoopie pies are also being shipped with cookie orders. “We’re selling about 30,000 dozen cookies a week to Walnut Creek alone, that’s two-and-a-half semi loads a week.”
With demand for cookies reaching unprecedented levels, Yoder added a 28,000-square-foot production floor and state-of-the-art equipment that he said was an investment “in the millions of dollars.” The new production area was built attached to the original, 14,000-square-foot building and made its debut in February.
The all-in commitment to marketing cookies has resulted in the creation of Yoder’s Baking Company, a spin-off of Yoder’s Country Market.
The 14,000-square-foot building, formerly used for production, now serves as a warehouse. It features hundreds of 50-pound bags of sugar, flour and oats, for example. It includes easy-to-overlook necessities such as the containers in which cookies are served and specially created shipping boxes, all stored by the thousands in a warehouse featuring a height equal to that of a Home Depot.
Yoder said he sometimes can’t believe how demand for a product so simple can be embraced so strongly.
“What surprises me most is how many (email) contacts we get from people who say, ‘We were somewhere on vacation, we picked up your product, where can we buy it at home?’” Yoder said. “I mean, we’re talking about a cookie here, not a piece of clothing or the perfect work boots. I have never had anything that was so absolutely delicious that I had to contact the distributor to find out where I can buy more. But it’s happening; it’s happening every day.”
Yoder said he expects the store’s cookies to be available in 2026 at all 120 locations of an Illinois-based farm-supply chain called Rural King. Meanwhile, his projections for Yoder’s Baking Company are ambitious, predicting to triple in size within the next decade.
Yoder said he is working with the FDA in an attempt to secure its certification. That would open a new set of doors to food-service companies such as Sysco and Gordon carrying Yoder’s cookies.
He said Yoder’s Baking Company currently features a staff of about 30 employees who work an eight-hour shift that starts at 4 a.m. Incidentally, Yoder said cookies are made using his family’s recipes.
Which begs the question: What is Yoder’s best-selling cookie?
“It’s really even between chocolate chip and monster,” he said, explaining monster cookies are oatmeal-based, and include chocolate chips and mini M&Ms. “Those are by far the two top-selling cookies.”
He admitted his personal allegiance leans toward molasses.
Yoder said the unbelievable success of Yoder’s cookies in so many places around the country make him proud. In addition, he said he is proud of his staff and proud that Centreville gains attention in such a positive way.
“Our success is a story that’s really too good to be true and I don’t take anything about that success for granted,” Yoder said. “I feel like God has opened up doors and we had to walk through them, but this has all been divinely given by God as an opportunity. We have been very blessed.”
The market is located at 375 Eleanor Drive. Find out more at yodersofcentreville.com.
This article originally appeared on Sturgis Journal: Yoder’s Country Market expands to every state east of the Mississippi River and a few west
Reporting by Jef Rietsma, Special to Sturgis Journal / Sturgis Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
