A family bakery in Ontario, a move to Burlington and a shelf of cookies and wafers.

Voortman is a Canadian brand of cookies and wafers, made by Voortman Cookies Limited of Burlington, Ontario. Its story begins with two brothers. The English-language Wikipedia article on the company says it was founded in 1951 by William and Harry Voortman, Dutch immigrant brothers. The trade publication Baking Business, reporting on 7 January 2020, gave the same year and the same two names, and described the company as having grown from a bakery opened in Hamilton, Ontario, by two young Dutch brothers.

The company tells the same origin in its own words. Its website, in a version archived in December 2025, says Voortman Bakery began in 1951 in Hamilton when William and Harry Voortman started a business baking cookies. The company says the brothers drew on skills handed down through a family baking tradition, and that in the early years they sold their cookies directly to one grocery store at a time. Those are the company’s own words about its early years.

The business later settled in nearby Burlington. Baking Business said in January 2020 that the company ran its cookie and wafer lines at its headquarters in Burlington. CBC News had already referred to the firm as Voortman’s of Burlington, Ontario, in a report dated 25 November 2003. When the business changed hands in 2024, the Detroit Free Press and the trade title Food Processing both said the deal included a leased manufacturing facility in Burlington.

The family stayed involved for decades. In its 2003 report, CBC News quoted Harry Voortman speaking for the company about a change to its recipes. Baking Business reported in 2020 that when a private equity firm took a majority stake in 2015, it said it would be partnering with Harry Voortman and the company’s senior management. The same report quoted a director of that firm thanking Harry Voortman and the Voortman family for their support during the years of its ownership.

The range is built around two kinds of product. The English-language Wikipedia article lists coconut, windmill and turnover cookies, and wafers in flavours that include vanilla, strawberry, maple and chocolate. The Detroit Free Press, writing in October 2024, described the brand as known for Windmill cookies studded with sliced almonds, and said its zero-sugar cookies, reduced-sugar cookies and wafer cookies were sold in the United States and Canada under the Voortman Bakery name.

Swander Pace, Hostess, Smucker and Second Nature Brands.

The ownership changed in 2015. Baking Business reported on 7 January 2020 that the private equity firm Swander Pace Capital had held a majority stake in Voortman since 2015, and that at the time of its investment the firm said it would partner with Harry Voortman and senior management to build on the company’s distribution and product range.

The next owner was a snack-cake company. Baking Business said Hostess Brands, the American maker of Twinkies, finalised its purchase of Voortman Cookies from Swander Pace Capital on 3 January 2020, after announcing the deal late in 2019. The report quoted Hostess’s chief executive at the time, Andrew P. Callahan, saying that Voortman extended the Hostess portfolio into the cookie category, and quoted a Swander Pace director saying the firm believed Hostess would be a good steward of the brand.

Hostess itself did not stay independent for long. CSP Daily News reported on 17 November 2023 that The J. M. Smucker Co., the Orrville, Ohio, food company behind Smucker’s, had closed its acquisition of Hostess Brands. The article said the transaction included the Hostess snack-cake brands and the Voortman cookie brand, together with manufacturing facilities that included one in Burlington, Ontario. Smucker’s chair and chief executive, Mark Smucker, was quoted welcoming Hostess into the company.

The Detroit Free Press reported on 22 October 2024 that Second Nature Brands, a snack company based in Madison Heights, Michigan, and the parent of Sanders Candy and Kar’s Nuts, was acquiring the Voortman brand from J. M. Smucker in an all-cash deal. The paper said the transaction covered all Voortman trademarks and the leased manufacturing facility in Burlington, and that Voortman employees would transition with the business. It quoted Second Nature Brands’ chief executive, Victor Mehren, saying the purchase broadened the company’s scale within the cookie category in the United States and Canada, and quoted Mark Smucker saying the sale would let Smucker focus on the Hostess brand.

The same report gave some background on the buyer. It said the London-based private equity firm CapVest Partners acquired Second Nature Brands in 2022, that Kar’s Nuts had bought Sanders in 2018, and that Second Nature Brands had earlier bought Sahale Snacks from Smucker and the Brownie Brittle line. Food Processing reported on 4 December 2024 that Smucker had closed the sale of the Voortman business to Second Nature Brands. Second Nature Brands has owned Voortman since December 2024.

Design and documentation.

A cookie or cracker is usually met first as a package rather than as a biscuit: a printed paperboard box, a sleeve inside it, a plastic tray that holds rows of cookies upright, or, for gifts and holidays, a decorated metal tin. The package does most of the brand’s visual work on a shop shelf, where a name, a colour field and a photograph of the product have to be read from a distance and recognised again on the next visit.

Because a cookie or cracker name can pass between bakeries and food groups over the decades, the box and the logo often outlast the company that first printed them, while the recipe, the bakery and the owner change behind them. That makes the plain questions behind each name worth asking: who started it, who owns it now, and where the product is actually baked and packed.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself, covering its founding story, its owners over time, where its cookies or crackers are made and how its packaging has changed, and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A recipe change in 2003, a relaunch in 2017 and a range sorted by sugar.

Voortman’s packaging has changed alongside its recipes. On 25 November 2003, CBC News reported that Voortman’s of Burlington would stop using trans fatty acids in its cookies from the following March, and that Harry Voortman said no hydrogenated or partly hydrogenated oils would be used. He told the broadcaster that the change followed urging from his daughter. The report said the new cookies, and their new packaging, should be in stores by March.

A larger change came under private equity ownership. Baking Business reported in January 2020 that in 2017 Voortman went through a brand relaunch that included a new logo and new packaging, new recipes and updated flavours. The relaunch also reformulated its products to remove artificial colours, artificial flavours and high-fructose corn syrup, the publication said. The English-language Wikipedia article on the company describes the same 2017 rebranding and cites a report in the trade magazine Adweek from March 2017.

The company’s own website shows how the range is now presented. In the version archived in December 2025, the site sorts its products into Perfectly Sweet cookies, Zero Sugar cookies, wafers and zero-sugar wafers, alongside limited editions. Voortman says its bakers perfect each recipe and that it bakes with real fruit, whole grain oats, coconut and almonds. It also says its snacks contain no artificial colours, artificial flavours, high-fructose corn syrup or trans fat. Those statements are the company’s own description of its products. The same site names the brand as both Voortman and Voortman Bakery, the name the Detroit Free Press also used in 2024 for the cookies sold in the United States and Canada.

One shape recurs in the range: the windmill. The Detroit Free Press singled out Voortman’s Windmill cookies, studded with sliced almonds, when it reported the brand’s sale in 2024, and windmill cookies appear in the product list of the English-language Wikipedia article.

For a design guide, Voortman shows how a family bakery’s name can carry a single cookie box through a recipe change, a relaunch with a new logo and a run of new owners between 2015 and 2024, while the bakery stays in Burlington. Compare it with Christie, another Ontario biscuit bakery, and Smucker’s, the brand of its former owner. For this guide we use Delft blue, almond gold, wafer cream and berry red with a soft serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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