Keebler Soft Batch Cookies and the Soft Cookie Revolution

Keebler, the Soft Baked Era, and Cookie Lawsuits

In the early 1980s, companies began to realize that changes were occurring in the way cookies were consumed in the United States. People were buying more packaged cookies and baking less at home. Store-bought cookies were crisp and didn’t resemble those fresh from the oven. Manufacturers started to wonder, "Is there a market for a new type of ‘soft’ cookie?" If so, how could they be made and packaged? As it turned out, people did want this new type of cookie, and a couple of well-known companies, like Keebler, jumped into the market.

Often referred to at the time as "ready-to-eat" homemade cookies, soft cookies were first brought to market by Procter & Gamble under its Duncan Hines brand. Their version hit store shelves in test markets in January of 1983 and was a big success. Other companies quickly took notice. We got Frito-Lay's Grandma’s Rich’n Chewy cookies, Nabisco’s Almost Home and Chewy Chips Ahoy, and finally, Keebler would enter the space with Soft Batch.

Soft Batch became by far my favorite, but I was cynical when I first saw them. A friend of the family, who worked as a food distributor, would bring us a bag of fun snack foods every other month. In the summer of 1984, a bag of Soft Batch was in the mix, and I didn’t trust them. With my mom's urging, I tried one, and it was a revelation; I was hooked. From that day forward, whenever I had the opportunity to have a cookie from the supermarket, I chose Keebler Soft Batch.

They were slightly firm on the outside, soft on the inside, and could withstand a dunking in milk with the best of them. A package weighed 12 ounces (0.45 kg) and retailed for around $1.69, although you could usually find a coupon in your local paper. While Chocolate Chip was the best flavor, they also released a few other flavors, including:

• Peanut Butter

• Oatmeal Raisin

• Sugar

• Fudge Almond Coconut

• Mint Chocolate Chip

• Walnut Chocolate Chip

• Peanut Butter Fudge Chocolate Chip

I eventually tried all of these flavors. Most of them I could take or leave, but the Mint Chocolate Chip and both Peanut Butter flavors worked really well in soft cookie form.

My family was pretty excited about their release, and the next time we received our “Bag of Snacks,” we had multiple bags of Soft Batch cookies in various flavors. We also got a collector's glass that I used until it faded from over-cleaning. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was part of a set of four. Those glasses, along with many other Soft Batch-related merchandise from the time, can be bought online, and the prices can be reasonable.

I wasn’t the only one; these soft cookies were turning into a big deal. By the middle of 1985, according to the Macon Telegraph and News, cookie retail sales for 1985 were expected to be around $2.8 billion. Jay Friedman, a bakery analyst at Kidder Peabody & Co., estimated that soft cookies would account for about $450 million. This was a significant jump from 1984 when soft cookies made up just 8.6% of sales. By the middle of 1985, they accounted for 16%. The reason for the big jump? Hype. Soft Cookies were appearing everywhere, with a deluge of advertisements from all the big companies. This push was already starting to wane, and as soft cookies moved into 1986, the sales growth flattened significantly.

Keebler Soft Batch makes an appearance in an episode of Magnum PI

Keebler was late to this cookie party, but when they jumped in, they quickly moved to the top of the sales ranking. How did they do it? Well, according to Keebler spokesperson Stuart Greenblatt, "We had a product like that soft cookie for some time. But we were careful in our development. We watched the marketplace and worked on our brand and feel that in waiting, we came up with a superior product." It was a solid product, with a nice texture and consistent taste. It also happened to have a set of child-friendly spokes-elves that I am sure helped get the Soft Batch brand into the minds of children across the country.

Waiting seemed to work out well for Keebler, but other companies, Procter & Gamble (P&G) in particular, were not so sure that they were just “watching the market.” They thought they might be watching P&G factories.

In 1979, two P&G researchers, William J. Brabbs and Charles A. Hong, applied for a patent on a soft cookie-making process. It was granted in June 1984, and soon lawsuits were filed against their competitors. They alleged that Nabisco entered a bakery where cookies were manufactured, Keebler flew a plane over to photograph the construction of their cookie plant, and that Frito-Lay had an employee pose as a customer to attend a confidential presentation.

The case was settled in 1989, and the three companies were ordered to pay P&G $125 million in damages. It was a victory, but not much of one. By this point, the three other companies had all developed new methods for soft cookie production, so they were not forced to stop making cookies. This was also well after the golden age of soft cookies, which peaked in 1987. According to Advertising Age, in 1989, soft cookies made up just 10% of the then $3.2 billion ready-to-eat retail cookie market. It should also be noted that the new top soft cookie was Chewy Chips Ahoy, which landed on shelves after the lawsuit had been filed.

The soft cookie war of the 1980s, while brief, left a delicious legacy that continues to influence the cookie aisles of supermarkets today. Keebler's Soft Batch cookies, with their innovative soft texture that captured the fresh-from-the-oven taste, not only dominated the market during their peak but also set a new standard for what consumers expect from packaged cookies. Despite the intense competition and the eventual legal battles over proprietary baking processes, the enduring appeal of Soft Batch cookies speaks volumes about their impact. Today, as we reach for a package of Keebler Soft Batch or perhaps some Chewy Chips Ahoy, we're not just indulging in a snack; we're savoring a piece of the mid-80s cookie revolution—a time when the quest for the perfect soft cookie changed the snack world forever.