HOMEMADE COOKIES, TWICE BAKED Bucks County lures Riley Silbert ’12 back to the family biscotti business. MICHAEL MATROS When baby Riley’s first painful teeth started to appear, the answer was close at hand. Bucks County Biscotti, owned by Riley’s parents, Karen and Craig Silbert, provided as many teething biscuits as necessary. “The biscotti were twice-baked, nice and hard,” explains the now-adult Riley Silbert ’12. Born into a biscotti family and nurtured by the bakery, Silbert returned home to his parents about two years ago from New York City. In Manhattan, he’d joined his SPS friend, Mike Ippolito ’12, in starting Blockworks, a digital asset media company. While Blockworks thrived, Silbert sensed a different challenge back home. “I never at St. Paul’s, or even in college, thought I was going to come back and work in the bakery in Bucks County, Pennsylvania,” Silbert insists. “But I sort of began to look at the business from a totally different lens and thought, ‘Oh, this is actually something that has a lot of potential.’ So that was what really led me to come back home.” Bucks County Biscotti, now offering flavors ranging from classic anise almond to sea-salted chocolate toffee, began baking in 1992. For years, it was an entirely wholesale operation, selling to coffee shops and cafés. Then, just after Silbert’s return, COVID-19 closed Buck’s County customers’ doors. “About six weeks after I came home, that all fell off a cliff,” he says. “So, we had to re-strategize the business.” Silbert’s first initiative was to create an entirely new line for the Italian cookies. “We developed a website and started selling to retail folks with a DTC — direct-to-consumer — format. And we were able to throw the website up and work with our providers to get some redesigned packaging. We were able to start selling on the website within about a month.” With the new packaging came a stronger emphasis on environmental sustainability.
“Biscotti being a twice-baked Italian cookie, just in its nature, it’s a fragile cookie,” Silbert explains. “There was this sort of balancing act between providing really secure, safe transit for the product, but then also not having to load it with tons of plastics or anything that was going to be really harmful to the environment.” The first step, Silbert explains, was to use a 100% biodegradable packing peanut made from corn. When customers receive their packages, they can take the eco-friendly peanuts, dump them into their sink, and dissolve them under hot water. Some use the packing peanuts for composting instead. Silbert also made the decision “to not use any intense colored dyes on any of the packaging and to maintain its recyclable quality.” As Silbert takes on more of the responsibility for running the business, he credits his parents for initiating its environmental emphasis. In 1994, they installed a 36-array solar panel on the barn, which now powers the entire bakery. Three years later, they created a full geothermal system, which provides a stable temperature. “In the bakery, it’s crucial to maintain humidity levels and certain temperatures during the process,” he says, “so the geothermal has helped tremendously with that.” As his parents approach retirement, Silbert has assumed a more pivotal role as the three-person company heads into the busy holiday season. With his hands covered in the sticky biscotti dough, he’s considering the company’s future. “I’m developing a new product called ‘Crust Dust,’ which is the fine powder byproduct when the loaves are sliced into individual cookies. The idea is that, with a little butter and sugar added to a jar of Crust Dust, you can make unique and delicious pie crusts — like a graham cracker crust but with flavors like lemon poppy and coconut dark chocolate chip. It’s another push toward creating a zero-waste environment.”
spshorae.com Alumni Horae | Issue I 21/22
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