Key to the company's success was the quality of its soft-baked cookies. These were much less common in the cookie market, but at the same time were perceived to be closer to homemade than other cookies. Soft-baked cookies had higher moisture content than ones that were dry and relatively hard, and thus had a much shorter shelf life. To compensate for this, the company developed a system of baking cookies only after orders for them were received, allowing it to keep store stocks fresh and minimize waste. Archway's goal was for stores to sell half of the cookies on display each week, ensuring that the vast majority would be purchased well before the six-week "sell-by" date was reached.

I used to eat more than my fair share of Archway Double Dutch Chocolate, Ruth's Golden Oatmeal and Rocky Road cookies. But around 2001, I noticed they weren't quite as good - less moist, if not stale. A few years later, other brands, Petri for instance, that also weren't very moist, began taking their place on the shelves. Now I know why. After years of being a family-held company, Archway was being passed from holding company to holding company, each one sucking out profits before dumping it off to the next corporate vampire.

Media talking heads have blamed consumers for relying too heavily on credit, yet here we see blase' executives falsifying sales figures to get loans to carry the company through lean times:

Oh, No! What Happened to Archway?

Mr. Roberts said he confronted Mr. Multer in his office in mid-May. "I thought I would go in there and tell him that what was happening wasn't kosher and that we would have to restate the financials," Mr. Roberts recalled. "I wanted him to raise his hand and say: 'Oh boy, we have some big accounting errors. I don't know how it happened, but let's fix it.' "

Instead, Mr. Roberts said Mr. Multer dismissed his concerns, saying that was how sales were going to have to be accounted for in order for Archway to get through a crucial time.

and

At one point last summer, Mr. Roberts said, George Knobloch, then president of Archway, held a meeting with supervisors and managers in which he said the company had been pushing product onto its distributors to "make it look like we were doing O.K.," and that the "virtual" sales were designed to help secure bank loans. Mr. Roberts's recollection of the meeting was confirmed by another Archway employee who also attended the meeting but requested anonymity because of legal concerns.