NORWOOD, OHIO — United Dairy Farmers (UDF), a Cincinnati-based convenience store chain known for its square yeast-raised donuts, has recalibrated its baking packaging methods as well as its distribution practices to ensure daily delivery of an expanding line of fresh baked foods across its 177 locations across southern Ohio, northern Kentucky and parts of Indiana.

“Freshness, innovation and convenience are core to our United Dairy Farmers heritage,” said David Lindner, senior vice president of retail and co-owner of UDF. “Even with the pandemic slowdown, we continued investment and expansion of our capabilities at the bakery while continuing our recipe development to create the ideal fresh cookies and brownie products for our stores and our guests.”

Part of the company’s efforts included ramping up the number of fleet drivers to handle daily deliveries to each of UDF’s locations across the tri-state area. The company also has added a new oven system that has allowed for more consistent quality in production of cookies and fudge brownies, which are used in the convenience store chain’s popular fudge brownie sundae.

With its renewed focus, UDF said it now offers 20 baked food products across its stores, including blueberry muffins, cinnamon rolls, cookies (candy, chocolate chunk, Snickerdoodle and white chocolate macadamia nut), donuts (classic glazed, jelly filled, Bavarian cream, chocolate glaze, devil’s food cake, kettle and Long John, plus the Buckeye donut during the fall), donuts holes (glazed chocolate, glazed confetti and glazed sour cream), double chocolate chunk brownie, double chocolate muffins, and glazed croissants.

“Customers seem to really like the new products, and we have made them easy to find with a dedicated display,” said Chuck Kronyak, bakery category manager at UDF. “Over the last three weeks we have seen unit sales growth of over 16%, which we attribute to the addition of new varieties, daily delivery and some return to more normal commuter patterns.”