About Gille
About Gille
Gille – baking cookies for over 50 years
Baker Tord Einarsson created the Gille brand at his café, Kafé Gillet, in Örkelljunga, Sweden, in the 1960s. The rumour spread about his delicious cookies and soon they were being sold all over Sweden. Gille began making its famous family-size packs back in the 1970s.
Everybody loves Gille
In the early 1980s, Gille’s cookies became popular in Norway, Denmark and Germany. After that, both Gille’s exports and its product development expanded when the company also added Ginger Snaps to its range.
Today Gille’s heart-shaped Ginger Snaps are one of Sweden’s best-selling gingerbread cookies – from classic, small heart-shaped cookies to large heart-shaped Ginger Snaps with a hole at the top, so you can even hang them in your Christmas tree. By the mid-1980s, Gille’s cookies had become so popular that the company opened a new bakery in Örkelljunga.
Gille became a market leader in Sweden in the early 1990s. The company also received Sweden’s Stora Exportpriset award for its international expansion soon after.
By 2000, the company sold more products internationally than in Sweden.
Gille in Sweden and around the world
Gille is very popular in Sweden and makes around 40 per cent of all the cookies sold in the Swedish market.
Our cookies are popular outside of Sweden too, and we export products to around 30 countries all over the world.
Our best-selling cookies are our Double Chocolate Crisps and Oat Crisps.
Today, Continental Bakeries North Europe AB, which is part of a large European company, owns the Gille brand.
Learn more about Continental Bakeries here.
Local production in Sweden, backed by strong European owners
Almost all Gille products are baked and packed with care and attention at our two bakeries in Åsljunga and Örkeljunga in Southern Sweden. Around 220 employees bake more than 1.5 billion biscuits and cookies every year. Today, the Gille brand is owned by Continental Bakeries North Europe AB, which is part of a major European group. Click here to find out more about Continental Bakeries.
Gille & Sweden’s famous fika tradition.
The Gille brand is still growing, as is Sweden’s famous fikatradition. Fika is unique to Sweden and many people from other countries find the idea both new and exotic. Swedish people really enjoy taking a break with a cup of coffee and a sweet treat. We celebrate our holidays with cookies and sweets and we fikar together with our workmates when we take breaks.
There might not be many traditional, old-style cafés left in Sweden, but our famous fika tradition lives on in Gille’s cookies!
Inside Gille’s bakery
Gille is proud to continue the good old Swedish tradition of fika! We have a fantastic assortment of traditional Swedish cookies that are always both top-quality and delicious. At our bakeries in Åsljunga and Örkelljunga, Sweden, around 220 Gille bakers use love and care to make more than 1.5 billion cookies every year!
How we bake Gille cookies
Our classic Gille cookies celebrate natural flavours. As much as possible, we use only high-quality ingredients from Sweden in our baking. Our bakers use only the best flour, sugar and syrup from our southern Sweden. Also, the oats in Gille cookies come from the very best oat fields in Sweden.
Gille’s product developers use their expert skills to create our unique and popular recipes.
What’s in Gille’s cookies?
We want as many people as possible to enjoy our cookies. That’s why we bake basically all our cookies without unnecessary additives. Every Gille cookie contains gluten, since they’re baked using oats and wheat flour. If you’re allergic, over-sensitive, or intolerant to any type of food, you should always carefully read the list of ingredients printed on the package. Here, we describe exactly what’s in our cookies.
Our ingredients
Continental Bakeries orients itself in particular towards close cooperation with our most important suppliers and packaging technologists with extra consideration for sustainability. Our products are full of natural ingredients for which we have the earth to thank. Continental Bakeries wishes to make an active contribution to preserving our world, which is why we endeavour to procure our raw materials for our products whilst respecting man, animals and the environment. We are making more and more progress in this thanks to our suppliers!
Oats
Oat is a centuries old grain type that is still used in many nutritional products due to its high nutritional value. Continental Bakeries harvests the oats for its products from southern Swedish fields in Västra Götaland, which are known for their high quality. Oat is rich in fibres and proteins and produces a long-term feeling of satisfaction so that it also fits into any lifestyle and even into a diet. Oat fibres are furthermore connected with a better cholesterol value. Many oat flakes are used in most of our products whereby the taste and nutritional value are best retained.
Barn eggs
Continental Bakeries wishes to make an active contribution to a better world and this also includes animal welfare. All factories have switched completely to the use of barn eggs and “free-range” are also available if desired. Pure enjoyment with a good feeling!
Palm oil
Palm oil is a very versatile product that is applied in many foods. From a product-technical standpoint, palm oil is very stable in the baking process, colourless, a natural preservative and applicable in many products. Furthermore, palm trees are fast-growing plants requiring relatively little surface compared with other fat-producing plants. A condition for Continental Bakeries is however that the palm oil is cultivated in a sensible and sustainable manner. This is why we joined the organization RSPO (Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil). The RSPO has set up environmental and social norms that companies must fulfil when producing RSPO-certified palm oil. These criteria contribute to the minimizing the effects of palm growing on the environment and welfare of the communities in palm oil-producing regions.
Quality assurance & food safety
We continue working to make sure we always offer you cookies with an even and high standard of quality. We make quality assurance work part of everything we do through internal audits, staff training and on-going improvements. We also have an independent third party evaluate our quality management system every year. This guarantees that we continue to improve and keep our operations up to date. We’re also certified in line with two Global Food Safety Initiative-approved quality standards – IFS Food and BRC Food. Our organic cookies are certified according to the EU organic standard.