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The holidays are crunch time at Mrs. Hanes’ Moravian Cookies.

At the more than century-old Davidson County family bakery, workers hand-roll, hand-cut and hand-pack 10 million cookies a year, six flavors in all, including the top-selling Ginger Crisp.

But 90% of its business comes in November and December, said Ramona “Mona” Hanes Templin, former 42-year president of the bakery before handing the reigns to her 40-year-old son, Jedidiah “Jed” Hanes Templin.

“It’s all hands on deck at Christmas,” Jed Templin told The Charlotte Observer on a Nov. 19 tour of the 36,000-square-foot cookie production plant, including its retail store, on his great-grandfather’s former cow pasture.

Handmade cookies are all in the family

Jed Templin is the fourth generation of cookie bakers since his great-grandmother, Bertha Crouch Foltz, sold cookies she baked in a wood stove in her home in 1920 near the present-day bakery. She invented the Moravian Sugar Crisp variety, thus the bakery’s trade name: Moravian Sugar Crisp Co., Mona Templin said.

“There was no Moravian sugar cookie until my grandmother came up with it to join her Ginger Crisp cookie,” she said.

Of all the Moravian cookie businesses that emerged over the decades, “we’re the only ones who still make them by hand,” Mona Templin said.

Foltz’s daughter, Evva Foltz Hanes — the “Mrs. Hanes” in the bakery name — later headed the business as it mushroomed globally. Evva was Mona’s mom, and her picture appears on every package of Mrs. Hanes’ Moravian Cookies.

Evva’s husband, Travis, 93, also joined the business, while he still makes about 1,000 for-sale walking sticks each year in his barn.

Evva worked at Hanes Hosiery Mill “and came home at night and made the cookies after she put the kids to bed,” her daughter said.

“We made them in the upstairs kitchen and added a downstairs kitchen, and then the den became a kitchen,” Mona Templin said.

They built the first version of their cookie production building in 1968.

Their six cookie crisp flavors also include lemon, black walnut, chocolate and butterscotch.

The recipes are secret, kept in a safe, Jed Templin said. Although, his mom said with a laugh, any thief would have a tough time with the recipes because they all have to be made by hand.

“Part of the security system is that it’s hard work,” Jed quipped.

He said ingredients for the Ginger Crisp are one third flour, one third molasses “and one third everything else. Spices, including ginger, molasses, brown sugar, shortening and a few other secret ingredients.”

Eventually, Mona Templin and her brother Mike Templin ran the bakery.

The cookies became so famous under Evva Hanes that The New York Times wrote a news obituary article when she died at home on June 22, 2023.

“Evva Hanes, Who Made Moravian Cookies World Famous, Dies at 90,” the headline read.

The bakery was voted No. 5 U.S. cookie shop this year by USA Today readers.

“We’re in the middle of nowhere,” Mona Templin told the Observer. “Now, UPS has to bring out transfer trucks” for all the orders. “When I give people directions, I tell them it will seem like you’re going to the end of the earth, but I promise, you will get here.”

Cookies reflect family’s Moravian heritage

The bakery is located at 4643 Friedberg Church Road in unincorporated Arcadia, near Clemmons, about 70 miles northeast of Charlotte.

Mona Templin is an eighth-generation Moravian and Jed the ninth-generation. Nine generations of their family are buried in the nearby cemetery of Friedberg Moravian Church, founded in 1773.

Jed Templin’s 4-year-old daughter, Adelaide, already is an expert dough roller, Mona Templin said, so she may become the family’s fifth generation of bakers.

Moravians in North Carolina predate the state, Jed Templin said. The Moravians who bought the 100,000 acres known as the Wachovia Tract in what is now Forsyth County purchased the land from England, he said.

The cookies are made by hand “out of respect for the family’s Moravian heritage,” Mona Templin said.

Operating one shift five days a week, the bakery employs 35 people full-time, plus about 20 part-time workers at Christmas, Mona Templin said. She now handles public relations and answers the public’s questions on the bakery’s social media channels.

Workers are all local, including 98-year-old Ruth Beanblossom, who counted and stacked cookies with several other longtime women employees Nov. 19. Beanblossom is so loyal that she was the only worker to show during a snow storm that shut down the region a few years ago, Mona Templin said.

In the bakery production room, women used rolling pins and cookie cutters to ready cookies for the double convection oven. Kayla Hand, who is in her early 20s, rolled dough on a board with a rolling pin. “I’m on autopilot,” she said with a smile.

Men employees pack the boxes of cookies for shipping.

The bakery also makes custom cookies, including one that a man ordered of a bust of President Donald Trump. “It looked just like him,’’ Mona Templin said.

Bakers recently made tooth-shaped cookies for a dentist and a Moravian-themed dessert for a debutante ball dinner hosted by a Georgia man who previously lived in the local area.

The dessert was a square of sugar cake, with a dollop of whipped cream and one of the bakery’s sugar cookies shaped into a tiara on top of the whipped cream.

“He ordered 500 of those,” Jed Templin said. “It’s because we still make the cookies by hand, still roll them out, cut them out with cookie cutters, that we can kind of do any shape” someone orders.

The bakery makes bunny-shaped cookies at Easter and offers Valentine tins of cookies for Valentine’s Day. Last year, for a family with the surname Moose, its bakers made 20 pounds of moose-shaped cookies for a Moose family reunion, Jed Templin said.

Year-round baking

Ginger Crisp “is the one cookie we can make ahead of time starting in January,” Jed Templin said. “The other flavors all have to be made at the time” they’ll be packed and shipped or sold at the retail store, he said.

“By mid-July, we’ve made about 50,000 pounds of ginger cookies, and we can start making the other flavors for Christmas.”

“There is a moment around early November when we’re full to the gills and there are tens of thousands of pounds of cookies sitting around,’ Jed Templin said. “And I’m going, ‘I hope everyone comes back this year to buy all of these cookies.’ It’s a lot.

“And by the end of the year?” he said. “It’s just bare walls. It’s a wild ride, every year.”

Charlotte Christmas Show expanded business

The bakery was among the only food businesses at the inaugural Charlotte Christmas Show in 1972, Mona Templin said. The show sparked the bakery’s rapid expansion.

“Y’all always featured us because we were loved in Charlotte,” she said, referring to The Charlotte Observer. “Some people would go to the Christmas Show just to come by and get a bunch of our cookies,” she said.

“We handed out our brochure,” Mona Templin said. “’Call us for mail order,’ and that started it, and it was by word of mouth.”

“Just until it feels right,” grandma said

As kids, Mona and her brother mixed the cookie doughs by hand, in 20-pound batches, and their mother added the flour, Jed Templin said.

“So when we got a bigger mixer so we could mix it with a machine, we had to standardize the recipe,” he said. “They asked her how much flour to add, and she said, ‘Well, the right amount.’”

”OK, how much is that?” the kids asked.

“I’m not really sure,” Evva replied. “Just until it feels right.”

‘”OK, we’re going to do some experiments to figure out the actual amount of flour,’” Jed said Evva’s children replied.

“The dough now is made by machine, thank goodness, because there is no way to do it by hand,” Mona Templin said. “We give it to the ladies after it’s mixed in the kitchen, and it goes in the refrigerator. The only ingredient they add is just enough flour to work the dough so it’s not sticky, and they also add the sugar variety. There’s a little bit of sugar that they sprinkle on the top.

“Again, you have to feel depending on the humidity, how cold the room is, what the temperature is outside, all sorts of things,” Mona Templin said. ”And they just have to be able to feel it.”

In other words, no instruction sheet.

“It is an art,” Jed Templin said. It takes a new hire at least three weeks “to really get a feel for it,” he said. “And most people can be taught the art of rolling and cutting cookies.”

“We believe that quality is more important than quantity and profit,” Mona Templin said. “We employ local people, we give tours to local schools and senior citizen groups, as well as many touring companies who visit North Carolina.

“We are uniquely North Carolina, uniquely Davidson County, and unique in the USA,” she said.

Why people keep coming back

Explaining the loyalty of their thousands of customers, Jed Templin said:

“For a lot of people, it’s the memories of the ginger cookies they had when they were growing up. Their grandmother made these cookies, or maybe their mother made the cookies. So when they get a chance to smell or taste these cookies, it’s like childhood Christmas for them.

“A lot of people go crazy for them for that reason,” he said. “The other reason is that it’s a handmade cookie. It tastes like grandma’s cookies because they are grandma’s cookies. It’s the same recipes, the same methods their grandmother used, my grandmother used.”

“They are uniquely made,” Mona Templin said. “There’s no place like us in the world, and they’re still made by hand. I think it’s the appreciation of that.

“Plus, you know what the main thing is? They taste good. They are a good product. We don’t sell them in fancy packaging. We’re one of the few places, in my opinion, that sells the product, not the package.”

By the numbers

Annual cookie production: About 10 million, totaling about 100,000 pounds.

Pounds of cookies baked at a time in a double convection oven: About 14, at 350 degrees for 10 minutes.

Flavors: 6. Ginger Crisp, Sugar Crisp, Lemon Crisp, Black Walnut Crisp, Chocolate Crisp, Butterscotch Crisp.

Primary cookie shapes: 4. Round, heart, scallop and Christmas tree. The bakery also makes turkey and leaf shapes in fall.

Annual UPS shipping bill: $300,000.

Annual ingredients:

• 65,000 pounds of flour.
• 40,000 pounds of molasses.
• 35,000 pounds of sugar.
• 450 pounds of ginger.

Annual visitors: About 6,000.