We slip them into backpacks, we pair them with a coffee, we dip them in a glass of milk, or we nibble straight from the package. Cookies and cakes are so much a part of our daily lives that we would almost forget what happens before they arrive in our cupboards. Yet behind a simple cookie or cake lie carefully selected raw ingredients, machines, men and women, checks at every step to guarantee impeccable quality and above all, real know-how. To understand what is at stake behind the making of a biscuit, we followed the various production steps of the Véritable Petit Beurre LU, directly at the heart of its factory in La Haye-Fouassière.
From field to package: what happens before you bite into a biscuit or cake?
Before becoming the little biscuit we all know, the Véritable Petit Beurre (or VPB for the insiders) begins far from the production line. For making a biscuit, it’s first about working with raw materials whose selection and traceability play an essential role.
Flour, butter, sugar, eggs… These ingredients are at the heart of many French biscuit and cake recipes. The sector also pays particular attention to their selection: according to the Syndicat des Biscuits, Gâteaux et Panifications de France, the supply of butter, sugar, flour and eggs is essentially sourced in France and, when possible, near the production sites. This proximity notably facilitates ingredient traceability and guarantees consumers the quality of the products.
For the Véritable Petit Beurre LU, this story begins with wheat. The biscuit is produced in La Haye-Fouassière, near Nantes, from wheat harvested by local farmers. In other words, even before stepping through the factory doors, there is already an entire supply chain mobilized behind each package of biscuits or cakes.
How is a Petit Beurre actually made?
Before talking about its entire manufacturing process, allow us a brief reminder of its history. A history that goes back over 130 years!
If the Véritable Petit Beurre LU is today recognizable at first sight, it is no accident. In 1886, Louis Lefèvre-Utile, co-founder of the brand, conceived this biscuit inspired by doilies. Even the details of its shape have a precise symbolism! The four corners represent the four seasons, the 52 teeth correspond to the 52 weeks of the year, the 24 perforations echo the 24 hours of the day, while its precise 7 cm size references the seven days of the week.
An quite original way to transform a simple biscuit into a true everyday object and give it a unique identity. And it is very close to its birthplace, in La Haye-Fouassière, that the Véritable Petit Beurre continues its great adventure. Once the raw materials arrive on site, they are gradually transformed to give birth to the biscuit. It is a sequence of precise steps where every operation matters in order to obtain a product that is uniform and meets quality standards.
From raw material to dough
The first step is to work the different ingredients in enormous mixers to obtain the base of the biscuits. And behind each recipe of the roughly 80 families of biscuits and cakes in France, which may seem very simple, there lies in fact a great mastery of proportions, temperatures, and the various manufacturing parameters specific to each of them. The common objective? To have a dough that is homogeneous enough to be shaped and baked regularly.
From shaping to baking
Once ready, the dough enters a new phase of transformation: it is shaped to take the characteristic form of each biscuit before going through the baking stage. It is at this moment that the biscuit gradually takes on its appearance, its color, and its texture.
By the way, if you want to shine in company the next time you share a VPB, did you know that each biscuit used to pass through an oven nearly 100 meters long before being fully baked? And that about 5,500 biscuits were baked every minute?
While the recipe for the Véritable Petit Beurre is old, its production today relies on industrial processes that accurately reproduce the biscuit’s characteristics, while ensuring large-scale production.
Quality checks at every step
In a factory, producing a lot of biscuits does not mean reducing quality. On the contrary! Quality is closely monitored throughout the process. The quality approach begins with the selection of raw materials and continues during their processing. The supply chain is strict about these regulations and many manufacturers have also chosen to strengthen their quality approach by engaging in a certification process. The goal is to ensure that the product coming off the line truly meets the defined requirements.
Last step: heading to the package
Once shaped, baked, and checked, the biscuits move on to the packaging line. This is the final step before they leave the factory and reach the shelves. The package we grab in stores is thus the culmination of a journey much longer than it seems. For the Véritable Petit Beurre, it is a journey of almost 400 meters from the mixer to packaging!
Behind every industrial biscuit and cake, there are above all women and men who work daily
When you think of a factory, you easily imagine machines running non-stop. And while that isn’t entirely wrong, behind these production lines there are people who ensure the smooth running of operations. The biscuit and cake supply chain relies on skills that are transmitted, perfected, and evolve with new technologies. The French sector thus claims a genuine know-how, inherited from several generations of bakers, pastry chefs, and biscuit makers. This human dimension is closely linked to the territorial anchoring of the industry. Companies producing biscuits, cakes, and baking products contribute to the maintenance of thousands of direct and indirect jobs across the country!
Behind every biscuit and cake we eat in a few bites lies a whole chain of jobs and skills that begins with raw material producers and continues through the manufacturing workshops and ends with transportation.
A biscuit story dating back more than 200 years
In France, biscuits and cakes are an integral part of the culinary, cultural, and historical heritage. The sector claims more than 200 years of traditions and know-how, with recipes and specialties deeply tied to the regions.
From the pink biscuit of Reims to lace crepes, passing by speculoos, crackers, or regional specialties, the French biscuit heritage is richer than you might imagine. And this history continues to be transmitted. Some companies remain led by the founding families for several generations after their creation, while others have been taken over by enthusiasts who chose to preserve their recipes and know-how.
This commitment to preserving traditional recipes also involves precise rules: for certain biscuits and cakes (such as boudoirs, madeleines, or pound cakes, among others), the profession has adopted codes of practice defining the characteristics to be respected in order to use these names. Not every baker can claim boudoir! The French biscuit-making industry thus evolves, but it never restarts from scratch.
Making today’s biscuits also means thinking about tomorrow
Preserving recipes and know-how is no longer enough. Like many agri-food sectors, the biscuit industry must today respond to new expectations: origin of ingredients, nutritional quality, environment, packaging, or reducing waste.
More durable wheat in the fields
For the LU biscuits (Mondelez International group) for example, wheat is one of the most important raw materials. The brand thus launched in 2008 the Harmony program, developed with various players in the wheat supply chain, to promote more sustainable agricultural practices and to reduce the environmental footprint of biscuits. The program notably rests on a charter of good agricultural practices developed with the support of the Noé association and Arbre et Paysage 32 to promote wheat cultivation that is more respectful of the environment and local biodiversity.
For the 2021 harvest, about 1,100 partner farmers in France were engaged in this approach. And there is also a 20% reduction in pesticide use between 2009 and 2017 in fields cultivated under the Harmony charter compared to the national average.
Packaging that is evolving too
Packaging also plays a special role in the sector: cookies and cakes are fragile and must be protected to guarantee their preservation and transport to your cupboards. Manufacturers thus seek to strike a balance between product protection and reducing environmental impact. Several initiatives have been implemented in recent years, starting with reducing the size and weight of some packaging but also eliminating over-packaging, developing recyclable cartons or pouches, or using recycled materials or materials from sustainably managed forests.
Developing recipes without forgetting the pleasure
The other current challenge is obviously nutrition. For several years, the French biscuit and cake sector has mobilized to modify certain recipes to meet nutritional challenges and growing consumer expectations regarding composition, such as reducing sugar, salt, and saturated fats, but also increasing fiber.
Here are two concrete examples: between 2020 and 2025, in the biscuit and cake segment, there is a trend of about a 10% increase in average fiber content (according to Ciqual tables estimates); and between 2011 and 2018, the latest OQALI report highlighted a 5% reduction in average salt and saturated fat content for this sector.
And this challenge is significant because it means evolving the products without losing what makes them successful: their taste, their texture, their indulgence.
From tradition to innovation: French biscuit-making is reinventing itself
So finally, what exactly lies behind a biscuit?
Much more than a simple sequence of ingredients and transformation steps. From the selection of raw materials to packaging, the entire process rests on checks, skills, and know-how that allow reproducing a product with precision. The Véritable Petit Beurre is a good example if you want something concrete. Its appearance and its history are intimately linked to a tradition born in the 19th century, but its manufacture today sits within a modern industry, attentive to quality, traceability, and new environmental and nutritional challenges. And it’s the same for almost all French biscuits and cakes!
More broadly, the sector seeks to harmonize two dimensions: preserving a biscuit heritage over 200 years old while continuing to innovate. And finally, perhaps that is what we forget when we open a packet of biscuits or cakes. Behind every bite lies an entire supply chain. Farmers who grow the raw materials, teams who master the manufacturing processes, quality controls, companies rooted in their territories, not to mention the know-how passed down through generations.
So yes, we eat biscuits and cakes all year round. But now, we will know everything that lies behind them.
