Jacobsens Bakery

Why it is renowned

In November 2024 the American food site The Kitchn reviewed Jacobsens Danish butter cookies, found them lighter and more delicate than the butter cookies its writer grew up with, and named them the tin to bring to every holiday party.¹ Jacobsens bakes Danish butter cookies for export, and most of its sales are outside Denmark.² Its tins, sold under the Jacobsens name as well as under retailers' own labels, stand on shop shelves from Mexico and Canada to Japan, Indonesia, Australia and South Africa.³⁴ The house says it was the first to put the cookies in a designer tin and in an embossed designer tin, tins meant to be kept and used once the cookies are gone.⁵

The story

Sigurd Jacobsen founded the company in 1962 as an import and export business, then called Intergoods Bakery. From 1967 it exported Danish butter cookies in tins under its own brands, baked by other Danish bakeries; in 1984 it opened its own automated bakery and packing line. It took the name Jacobsens Bakery in 2001.⁶ The cookies are baked in Hedensted in five classic shapes, with fresh butter and without preservatives.³ Jan Jacobsen sold his majority stake to Givesco, a Danish food group based in Vejle, and stepped down as managing director at the turn of 2026; Givesco now owns the whole company.⁷⁶²

What to know it by

• Royal Castle³Round tin with a winter scene before a Danish castle
• Portobello Road³Tin with a London street scene and a bakery front
• Designer Tins³The range of decorated tins
• Scenes Of Europe³Tins with European town scenes