Prior to starting Bud's Best in 1991, Bud Cason owned and ran Greg's Cookies in Birmingham. He purchased the business in 1970. In 1983, he purchased Bishop Baking Company (a snack cake company) in Cleveland, TN. He sold the two companies in 1986. Bud had to sign a 5-year non-compete agreement after the sale.
Bud's Best Cookies began construction of the 89,000 sq. ft. building in 1991. Bud started a new concept with bite size cookies. He didn’t just make one variety, but an entire line of bite size cookies.
Since 1995, Bud's Best has manufactured for a national baking company and won their "Co-packer of the Year Award" in 1998 for manufacturing excellence. In 2022, Bud’s Best won “Ingredient Supplier of the Year’ from a large confection company.
On our sandwiching line, we can produce eight thousand sandwich cookies per minute! We have three other lines that make wire-cut and rotary cookies, and we can make around 3,500 per minute on each of the three lines. The total capacity (output) is well over 1 million cookies per hour. We also have a small sugar wafer line.
Over the years our facility has grown to over 120,000 square feet.
Bud Cason was Small Business Man of the Year for Shelby County in 1998. Bud's Best Cookies was voted by the Birmingham Business Journal as one of the best small businesses in Birmingham for 1998 and 1999. At a special luncheon in May of 2002, Bud's Best Cookies was presented Business of the Year Award by the Leadership Alumni Association of Shelby County. Bud Cason was inducted into the Baking Hall of Fame in 2017.
Bud Cason has been in the cookie business for over 65 years. In April of 2012, at a special meeting of employees and management, Bud announced that he was promoting his son, Al, to company President. Bud remains CEO and Chairman of the Board.
