 We begin every baking
day cracking over 800 dozen GRADE A eggs delivered fresh from a farm
in Lancaster, PA. The eggs are cracked by hand and are whipped
to give them a fluffy consistency. The eggs are then
blended with our secret flavor recipe, General Mills flour, Domino
Sugar, and pure 100% Canola oil in a mixer.
The mixing bowl is then rolled
over to the oven where the batter is pumped into a custom made
depositor. The depositor does what it name says; It deposits
four exact batter portions onto the pizzelle irons. Our oven
has 87 plates, or irons, on a conveyor that moves the pizzelles
through a baking tunnel. The temperatures and speed are
closely monitored and adjusted to maintain texture and taste.
One
second after the batter is placed on the bottom plate the top plate
gently comes down. Temperatures on the plates can range from
375 to 450 degrees depending on what flavor we are baking,
temperatures in the production area, or speed of the
oven. Between 27 and 35 seconds later (again
depending on speed and temperature), a pizzelle leaves the plates
and a small conveyor carries the baked cookie away from the
oven.
 The ride begins. The baked
pizzelles, having safely slid out of the oven are now on their way
to the bagging station, but first they must
cool. Traveling along 75 feet of stainless steel open rod
conveyor the cookies are cooled naturally. Reaching the baging
station, each cookie is carefully scrutinized, bagged, and
weighed. The average tenure for the ladies picking up
pizzelles is over ten years, and they are very selective
of what goes in a box of Little Pepi's.
From
the pick-up area the bags of cookies are sent to the boxing
station where they are twist tied and put in the famous red,
green,black, and white Little Pepi's box. The boxes are
placed in a heavyweight corrugated case, sealed, and walked to the
warehouse and placed on a skid. Knowing our cookies are
fragile, we don't slide cases of finished pizzelles on a conveyor,
or toss them. Although customers sometimes get broken cookies,
the response is you don't return potato chips because there are
broken ones, and besides a few broken Little Pepi's are better than
none.
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