Lauren Justice
Kathleen Torbleau works in the background at Hilldale’s Metcalfe Market while fresh-baked almond cookies await packaging.
A trip to Metcalfe’s Market at Hilldale is overwhelming: a vast wilderness of locally sourced cheese, imported pasta and Del Monte peaches. To survive, I ignore the bounty and return for the same items every trip, like a squirrel gathering walnuts and only walnuts.
But occasionally something I can’t ignore appears on the consumer landscape, the way a puffball mushroom materializes overnight on a lawn. On a recent visit to Metcalfe’s, I noticed a clear package of cookies labeled with a photograph of almonds and the word “Almond” in plain text. Normally, I wouldn’t be interested in store-bought cookies. I’ve spoiled my husband and son with home-baked treats for years, so they tend to turn up their noses at anything in a package. But these sugar-dusted gems were rounded, like ravioli, and interestingly irregular around the edges. They actually looked homemade.
I couldn’t resist. I bought a package and returned home for the most delicious coffee break I’d had in a while. The tender cookies, filled with marzipan, were perfection. My first thought was to try to replicate them myself. I dove into my cookbooks and even pulled out my mother’s old recipe cards, looking for something I could use as a starting point. Maybe an old-fashioned sugar cookie with almond paste worked into the dough?
But after several tries, I realized I couldn’t improve on the Metcalfe’s version. So I went back to the store…and back…and back. I was in heaven until, one day, tragedy struck: no more “Almond” cookies. The display shelf was filled with plain old peanut butter bars.
What strange force had brought the cookies there and then spirited them away? It was time to investigate. I stopped by the customer service desk to talk to Jim Meier, Metcalfe’s sales director, who is, according to his name tag, in his “15th Year of Service” at the store. Like most Metcalfe’s employees, he wears a white shirt with a Granny Smith green tie and never stops moving. Over the years I’ve seen him cleaning up spills, bagging groceries and setting up displays of small-batch jams.
I described the cookies to him. “So did you make them appear on the shelf?” I asked, awestruck that one person could have such power.
“A new product usually starts with me, but a lot of people are involved,” Jim explained. “Suppliers stop by and bring us things to try. If I can hand them out to employees to share with their families I do that. We try to find out if we think it will sell.”
“So what’s the story with almond cookies, exactly?” I asked, steering the conversation back to what really mattered.
“I can’t say for sure. We have so many new products every month. But we could walk over and talk to the bakery manager.”
Off we went at top sales-director speed, past the checkout counters, Jim adjusting things on shelves as we moved. Robin Elliot, the bakery manager (“7th Year of Service”) was busy, but took a moment to chat. At first she didn’t remember the almond cookies. But then it came to her.
“Oh, right. They come frozen in a big bag from Jacqueline’s Gourmet Cookies, like hockey pucks,” she says. “We still have some in the freezer.”
“You mean you bake them here? And package them yourselves?” I asked, my heart racing.
“Yep,” she said, wiping her hands on her apron. Her black baker’s jacket was specked with flour. “I should probably make a batch next week.”
“And then they’ll be out on the shelves where anyone can buy them?”
She smiled warmly. “Sure.”
There you have it. My little grocery store discovery, which seemed so mysterious, was actually the result of bustling human activity — like the kind you see in a Richard Scarry children’s book. People doing their jobs. People doing their jobs well. The most ordinary thing in the world. And yet, a kind of miracle.
Cost of a package of Almond cookies: $4.99
Weight of one unbaked cookie: 1.5 oz
Types of cookies sold at Metcalfe’s Market, Hilldale, approximately: 500
