When you think about peak cookie season, you most likely think about the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas. But one of the other busiest times for cookies is summertime. — If you've run a bakery through the summer season, you already know how popular demand can be. Catering orders for graduations and weddings, platters for summer parties and events, street fairs: demand can double almost overnight, right when your kitchen is hottest and your labor is stretched thinnest.

Bakeries that are able to survive the rush aren't hand-scooping their way through the summer months. They're running commercial cookie machines that turn out consistent, portion-perfect cookies by the tray. They are producing trays and trays of consistent cookies each minute with ease! Looking to get your own machine to help you through the busy summer months, and eventually through the holidays? Here's how to choose the right cookie depositor for your bakery, and which Empire machines fit each stage of growth.

Why Summer Breaks Manual Cookie Production

There are some veteran bakers who are impressively quick with their cookie production skills. Hand-scooping cookies is fine at 10 dozen a day. At 50 dozen, three problems show up fast:

Labor cost and availability. Summer is the hardest season to staff, and manual cookie production during busy months requires increased staffing. A cookie dropping machine reclaims that labor for decorating, customer service, and allows bakeries to keep up with demand without increasing labor.

Inconsistency. No matter how good you may be at hand-piping cookies, consistency will never be identical. Uneven cookies bake unevenly, portion unevenly, and cost you product. A depositor holds weight and diameter batch after batch with pinpoint precision.

What to Look For in a Commercial Cookie Machine

Before comparing models, get clear on three things:

Production volume. How many trays per hour do you actually need at peak to keep up with production demands? Keep track of your busy days and how many cookies you sold or how fast you sold out.

Product variety. Chances are, your bakery doesn’t just make one type of cookie. Cookie machines allow a bakery to automate the production of a variety of cookie types and styles, from stationary drop and rotary drop to wire-cut styles. Manually producing this many cookie types at volume is just too time-consuming.

Footprint. Floor space is money. Cookie machines feature compact designs but also come in tabletop versions that deliver serious output as well.

Recipe memory matters more than most buyers expect. Empire cookies depositors feature touchscreen controls and a 200-recipe memory capacity that allows any team member — including summer seasonal hires — to pull up the exact settings for every product and get identical results.

Empire's Cookie Machine Lineup for Summer Volume

babydrop cookie machine

BabyDrop MAXX Tabletop Cookie Depositor — Best for Growing Bakeries

The BabyDrop is Empire’s tabletop cookie machine that produces up to 120 trays of consistent cookies per hour with a touchscreen control panel and 200-recipe memory. It's ideal for small bakeries, cafés, and in-store bakery departments that need real volume without giving up precious floor space. This machine not only saves you space but time and money on labor and production costs as well.

suprema cookie depositor

Suprema MAXX Cookie Depositor — Best for High-Volume Production

When mid-to large retail bakeries require serious demand, the Suprema MAXX is built for it. With 240 trays per hour of wire-cut and drop cookies, with an intuitive touchscreen and 200-recipe capacity, the Suprema is the hardest worker in your bakery. With a wide range of nozzles and molds, one machine covers butter cookies, shortbread, biscotti logs, cream puffs, spritz, and more.

MaxiDrop Series — Maximum Performance for Intensive Production

For medium and large retail operations and wholesale productions running varied products, the MaxiDrop MAXX delivers top-tier performance and sturdiness with the flexibility to switch products fast. This machine is capable of 400 trays per hour of consistent and quality cookies.

Not sure where you land? Empire's cookie machine comparison chart breaks down every model by production volume and product type.

Sizing for Summer: A Quick Framework

  • Under 100 trays/hour at peak: BabyDrop Maxx
  • 180–300 trays/hour, multiple cookie styles: Suprema MAXX
  • 300–420 trays/hour, wholesale or high foot traffic: MaxiDrop MAXX

Let Your Cookie Machine Pay for Itself

Cookie machines may seem like a big purchase and commitment at first, but these machines tend to pay for themselves sooner rather than later. Look at it not like an expense — but as labor you don't have to hire, product you don't waste, and orders you don't have to turn down. The money you save on labor and waste, and the increase in production, allows these machines to pay for themselves in no time.

Ready to size a cookie machine for your production? Request a quote or talk to an Empire equipment specialist today. We've been matching bakeries to the right equipment since 1975 — let your cookie-making imagination run wild, and leave the rest to Empire.